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Worcester College is an independent, self-governing institution and one of the 39 constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. Established by Royal Charter in 1714, the College is governed according to its Statutes and By-Laws and is regulated by the Charity Commission.

We’re managed by a Governing Body made up of academic Fellows and senior administrative staff. Members of the Governing Body are the College’s trustees under charity law. They hold responsibility for the strategic direction and financial oversight of all College affairs. The Governing Body is chaired by the Provost and has regular meetings each term, with much of its business arising from the reports and recommendations of its sub-committees which cover key areas of College life.

Our policies and procedures
Equality, diversity & inclusion
Sustainability

Read our five-year strategy

Find out more

Our Governing Body

Provost

David Isaac

David Isaac CBE

Provost

Education

MA (Cambridge), MA (Oxford)

After attending King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny, which became a comprehensive when he was in the third form, David went on to read Law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He undertook postgraduate studies in Socio-Legal studies at Wolfson College, Oxford, before qualifying as a solicitor. He was a partner in Pinsent Masons LLP for many years, where he held a number of senior positions. During his career he specialised in advising clients on contract law matters and acted for HM Government and many other FTSE 100 and 250 companies.

Throughout his career David has also been involved in many other activities in the arts, human rights and education. He is the former Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Chair of Stonewall and Chair of Modern Art Oxford. He was also a director of the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, the Human Dignity Trust, the Big Lottery and 14-18 NOW. He is the current Chair of Governors at University of the Arts London.

David is a passionate supporter of the visual arts, as well as a keen mountain walker, swimmer, gardener, cook and beekeeper.

Headshot of Simon Cowan

Wigmore Clarendon Fellow & Tutor in Economics

Dr Simon Cowan

Headshot of Simon Cowan

Dr Simon Cowan

Wigmore Clarendon Fellow & Tutor in Economics

Associate Professor of Economics

Senior Fellow

Education

MA MPhil DPhil (Oxford)

I am an Associate Professor in Economics and Wigmore Clarendon Fellow in Economics at Worcester College. My research is on theoretical models of pricing in imperfect competition, with a recent focus on price discrimination and its welfare effects. I have also worked on the regulation of privately-owned utilities. Regulatory Reform: Economic Analysis and British Experience (MIT Press), written with co-authors Mark Armstrong and John Vickers, was published in 1994. I have papers in the American Economic ReviewThe Economic Journal and the Rand Journal of Economics, and am a former editor of Oxford Economic Papers.

Headshot of Kate Tunstall

Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones Fellow in Modern Languages & Tutor in French

Professor Kate Tunstall

Headshot of Kate Tunstall

Professor Kate Tunstall

Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones Fellow in Modern Languages & Tutor in French

Clarendon Professor of French

Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques

Education

MA MPhil PhD (Cambridge), MA (Oxford)

I have a longstanding commitment to and strong track record in widening participation in higher education. I was myself educated at a comprehensive school in South London and went from there to Cambridge, where I did a BA in French and German, including a year at the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier. I did a PhD in French at Cambridge, and held a Kennedy Fellowship at Harvard from 1995-96. I am always delighted to receive UCAS applications from sixth-formers from non-selective state schools and colleges.

Headshot of Donal Nolan

Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow & Tutor in Law

Professor Donal Nolan

Headshot of Donal Nolan

Professor Donal Nolan

Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow & Tutor in Law

Professor of Private Law

Vice Dean (Teaching & Recruitment), Faculty of Law

Education

BCL MA (Oxford)

Donal Nolan is Professor of Private Law in the University of Oxford and Francis Reynolds and Clarendon Fellow and Tutor in Law at Worcester College, Oxford. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford (BA and BCL) and was previously a Lecturer in Law at King’s College London. He has taught tort, contract, international trade law, restitution and commercial law, and has been a Visiting Professor in the University of Florida, the National University of Singapore, the University of Trento and Sichuan University. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne, a founding member of the World Tort Law Society, and an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He is also a member of the International Advisory Panel for the ALI’s Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property, and a member of the editorial committee of the Modern Law Review.

Headshot of Nir Vulkan

Lloyd’s Research Fellow & Tutor in Management Studies, Garden Master & Flag Master

Dr Nir Vulkan

Headshot of Nir Vulkan

Dr Nir Vulkan

Lloyd’s Research Fellow & Tutor in Management Studies, Garden Master & Flag Master

Associate Professor of Business Economics

Education

BSc (Tel Aviv), MA (Oxford), PhD (London)

Nir is a leading authority on fin tech, e-commerce and market design, and on applied research and teaching on hedge funds. Alongside his role at Saïd Business School, Nir is also a Fellow of Worcester College and a member of the Oxford Man Institute for Quantitative Finance.

In 2020 Nir chaired the Banking and Finance Committee on Ethical AI, which made recommendations to the European President and Parliament. Nir was also a member of the Insurance Committee on Ethical AI. Nir engages widely with industry: he acts as a consultant to technology companies and has developed software for specific applications within companies. He has developed models widely used in e-commerce, trading and hedge funds. Nir travels extensively to give seminars and talks and to participate in conferences, and has spoken at numerous universities in Europe, the Middle East and the USA. He acts as referee for a number of academic journals on economics.

Nir has a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University and gained a doctorate in Economics at University College, London, where he was awarded the Dean Scholarship for excellence in PhD studies. He became a Lecturer at Bristol University in 1997, and in 2001 moved to Saïd Business School.  He was the Executive Director of the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship between 2009 and 2011 and the co-founder and Director of OxLab, a laboratory for social science experiments, both at Saїd Business School.

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Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedics

Professor Andrew Carr

Headshot of Andrew Carr

Professor Andrew Carr FRCS FMedSci

Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedics

Professorial Fellow

Education

MB ChB ChM (Bristol), MA (Oxford)

Andrew Carr is the Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Oxford and trained at Bristol, Sheffield, Oxford, Seattle and Melbourne. He established the shoulder surgery service in Oxford and is past President of the British Shoulder and Elbow Surgery Society. He was a Non-Executive Director and then Divisional Director of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre during the formation of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. He is currently an elected Council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

He was head of the department of orthopaedics, rheumatology and musculoskeletal sciences from 2001-2022. During his tenure the department grew to become the largest academic musculoskeletal department globally with 600 staff, over 100 postgraduate research students and an external grant portfolio of £180million. He led the development of the Botnar Research Institute which now houses over 300 multidisciplinary researchers. He was Director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit in Oxford from 2008-2017 and was instrumental in the relocation of the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology to Oxford in 2013.

He is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and an NIHR Senior Investigator. His awards include an honorary Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Copenhagen, the Gold Medal of the British Orthopaedic Association and the Steindler Award from the USA. He is a Nuffield Medical Trustee, Chair of the Nuffield Oxford Hospitals Fund and  Deputy Chair of Trustees of the University of Bristol.

Headshot of Benjamin Morgan

Fellow & Tutor in German

Professor Benjamin Morgan

Headshot of Benjamin Morgan

Professor Benjamin Morgan

Fellow & Tutor in German

Professor of German and Comparative Literature

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

Benjamin Morgan’s main research interests are in German intellectual history (medieval mysticism, Nietzsche, early psychoanalysis, Heidegger, the Frankfurt School); German film (Fritz Lang, Leni Riefenstahl, the ‘Heimat’ film) and comparative literature. He has also worked on contemporary writing (Jelinek, Trojanow, McEwan). His current book project engages critically with the work of the Frankfurt School during the 1930s and 1940s to elaborate a model of socially committed, reflexive interdisciplinarity for the 21st century.

Benjamin is also the Modern Languages Coordinator for Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation.

Headshot of John Parrington

Rank Foundation-Netherthorpe Memorial Fellow & Tutor in Medicine

Professor John Parrington

Headshot of John Parrington

Professor John Parrington

Rank Foundation-Netherthorpe Memorial Fellow & Tutor in Medicine

Associate Professor in Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology

Head of Research (Sciences)

Education

MA (Cambridge), MA (Oxford), PhD (London)

Dr Parrington is a Fellow in Physiological Sciences (Pharmacology) and his research interests are molecular mechanisms of reproduction and early embryogenesis, the role of calcium signals in mediating key physiological events, and genomic and proteomic approaches to understanding cell signalling.

Ben Delo Fellow & Tutor in Mathematics & Vice-Provost

Dr Richard Earl

Dr Richard Earl

Ben Delo Fellow & Tutor in Mathematics & Vice-Provost

Academic Faculty, Mathematical Institute

Prevent Lead

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

I am the Ben Delo Fellow in Mathematics at Worcester College and a Departmental Lecturer in the Mathematical Institute. I grew up in West Yorkshire but have been entirely in Oxford since 1988 when I arrived as an undergraduate studying mathematics. In the College I have done various other roles: Tutor for Admissions, Tutor for Graduates, SCR Steward and Vice-Provost. In the Department I was the Outreach Officer and Admissions Coordinator for a decade and then the Director of Undergraduate Studies for a further decade. During 2022/23 I was Worcester’s choice to act as the University Assessor.

Headshot of Scott Scullion

Fellow & Tutor in Classics & Dean of Degrees

Dr Scott Scullion

Headshot of Scott Scullion

Dr Scott Scullion

Fellow & Tutor in Classics & Dean of Degrees

Faculty Lecturer in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature

Education

BA (Toronto), MA (Oxford), PhD (Harvard)

Scott Scullion is Fellow & Tutor in Classics at Worcester. His primary specialty is Greek tragedy and he also works on Greek religion and Greek textual criticism.

Headshot of Josephine Crawley Quinn

Martin Frederiksen Fellow & Tutor in Ancient History

Professor Josephine Crawley Quinn

Headshot of Josephine Crawley Quinn

Professor Josephine Crawley Quinn

Martin Frederiksen Fellow & Tutor in Ancient History

Professor of Ancient History

Education

MA (Oxford), MA PhD (California)

I work on Mediterranean history and archaeology, with particular interests in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, the Phoenicians, and ancient North Africa. I’ve published articles on topics from Roman imperialism to Athenian sculpture to Numidian architecture to Edwardian education, and I’ve co-edited volumes of essays on ‘The Hellenistic West’ (with Jonathan Prag) and ‘The Punic Mediterranean’ (with Nicholas Vella), as well as the collected articles of the late Peter Derow (with Andrew Erskine). My most recent book, In Search of the Phoenicians, was published by Princeton University Press in January 2018. My next book, How the World Made the West, will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2024.

Headshot of Andreas Willi

Diebold Professor of Comparative Philology

Professor Andreas Willi

Headshot of Andreas Willi

Professor Andreas Willi FBA

Diebold Professor of Comparative Philology

Professorial Fellow

Education

MA (Basle), MS (Fribourg), MA DPhil (Oxford)

Andreas Willi  studied Classics, Slavonic Languages and Literatures and Historical-Comparative Linguistics at the Universities of Basel, Lausanne, and Fribourg in Switzerland as well as at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. After writing his doctoral thesis on sociolinguistic variation in Ancient Greek at the University of Oxford, he worked as Oberassistent in Classics (Latin and Greek Philology) at the University of Basel, before becoming a member of the Swiss Institute at Rome and then moving back to Oxford in 2005 to take up the Diebold Chair of Comparative Philology. In 2020 he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.

Headshot of Endre Suli

Fellow & Tutor in Mathematics

Professor Endre Süli

Headshot of Endre Suli

Professor Endre Süli FRS

Fellow & Tutor in Mathematics

Professor of Numerical Analysis

Education

MA PhD (Belgrade), MA (Oxford)

Endre completed his doctorate in Mathematics at the University of Belgrade in 1985. He was appointed to an academic position at Oxford in the same year. He is now Professor of Numerical Analysis and a Fellow and Tutor in Mathematics. Endre is a Foreign Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc), a Member of the Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Headshot of Grant Ritchie

John and Patricia Danby Fellow & Tutor in Chemistry

Professor Grant Ritchie

Headshot of Grant Ritchie

Professor Grant Ritchie

John and Patricia Danby Fellow & Tutor in Chemistry

Professor of Chemistry

Head of Physical & Theoretical Chemistry

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

Grant Ritchie is a professor of Chemistry and Head of the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry (PTC) section in Oxford Chemistry. Prior to taking up the latter role he was Director of Graduate studies for 5 years (2015–2020). He leads a group that develops innovative techniques for trace gas detection with applications ranging from fundamental studies of gas phase chemical dynamics to plasma medicine and breath analysis. Part of his research involves translation of these methods into the real world and he works in close collaboration with scientists and engineers in both academic and industrial laboratories, and with physiologists and clinicians both internal and external to the University.

Grant was appointed to a lectureship in physical chemistry at the University of Oxford in 2006 alongside a tutorial fellowship at Worcester College. Prior to that date he had held several prestigious fellowships: a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellowship (2000–2003), a Junior Research Fellowship at St. John’s College (2000–2004), and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2000–2009). He obtained his BA and DPhil from Trinity College Oxford, the latter supervised by Gus Hancock in the area of chemical reaction dynamics. He is currently a member of the NERC peer review college and has authored the text books Atmospheric Chemistry – From the Surface to the Stratosphere (Wiley 2017) and Foundations of Physics for Chemists (OUP 2000).

Harry Pitt Fellow & Tutor in Modern History & Senior Treasurer of Amalgamated Clubs

Professor Bob Harris

Professor Bob Harris

Harry Pitt Fellow & Tutor in Modern History & Senior Treasurer of Amalgamated Clubs

Professor of British History

Education

BA (Durham), MA DPhil (Oxford)

I joined Oxford in 2006, having spent 13 years at the University of Dundee where I held a personal chair in British history.

Fellow & Tutor in Psychology, Dean & Steward of the Senior Common Room

Dr Paul Azzopardi

Dr Paul Azzopardi

Fellow & Tutor in Psychology, Dean & Steward of the Senior Common Room

Lecturer, Department of Experimental Psychology

Education

MA (Oxford), PhD (Victoria University of Manchester)

Dr Azzopardi’s research field is the neural basis of visual perception and conscious awareness, and his interests include cortical magnification factors, face perception, motion perception, the neural basis of blindsight, mechanisms underlying perceptual decisions, and disorders of conscious awareness such as found in patients with blindsight and visual neglect.

Headshot of David Steinsaltz

Loevner Fellow & Tutor in Statistics

Professor David Steinsaltz

Headshot of David Steinsaltz

Professor David Steinsaltz

Loevner Fellow & Tutor in Statistics

Associate Professor of Statistics

Education

MA (Oxford), MA (Yale), PhD (Harvard)

I moved to Oxford from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where I was Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Before then I was a postdoc at UC Berkeley for six and a half years, in the Departments of Demography and Statistics, following stints at the Technical University of Delft and the Technical University of Berlin. I completed my PhD in probability theory in the Harvard University Department of Mathematics in 1996, working with Persi Diaconis.

Lightbody Fellow & Tutor in History & Student Financial Aid Officer

Dr Conrad Leyser

Dr Conrad Leyser

Lightbody Fellow & Tutor in History & Student Financial Aid Officer

Clarendon Associate Professor of History

Deputy Dean of Degrees

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

I work on the religious and social history of western Europe and North Africa, from the fall of Rome to the rise of Latin Christendom after the first millennium. I have studied the problem of moral authority in the post-Roman West. My current project traces the relationship between institutional identity and cultural memory across the late ancient and early medieval period.  In a study entitled The Myth of the Church, I plan to follow the development–slow and late–of a professional, celibate clerical hierarchy.

My immediate interests are in proposing a new view of the tenth-century Church. I am testing the hypothesis that this was an era in which bishops took advantage of the confusion occasioned by the end of the Carolingian Empire to achieve an unprecedented degree of institutional autonomy and self-definition. By marshalling (and sometimes actively forging) the authority of the early Church, late ninth- and tenth-century clerics succeeded in making of the episcopacy a career, with its own code of conduct, and the possibility of advancement.

Headshot of Laura Ashe

David Woods Kemper Family Fellow & Tutor in English

Professor Laura Ashe

Headshot of Laura Ashe

Professor Laura Ashe

David Woods Kemper Family Fellow & Tutor in English

Professor of English Literature

Education

BA MPhil PhD (Cambridge), MA (Oxford)

Professor Laura Ashe teaches medieval literature, covering the early medieval period with first years (650-1350), and the later Middle Ages (1350-1550) and Shakespeare with second years, together with all kinds of specialist medieval topics in second and third year options. She also co-teaches a cross-period course on ‘Tragedy’ from ancient Greece to the present day.

Headshot of Gabriel Stylianides

Professor of Mathematics Education

Professor Gabriel Stylianides

Headshot of Gabriel Stylianides

Professor Gabriel Stylianides

Professor of Mathematics Education

Supernumerary & Governing Body Fellow

Education

Bed (Cyprus), MSc PhD (Michigan)

Gabriel Stylianides is Professor of Mathematics Education at the Department of Education and a Fellow of Worcester College. He is the convenor of the Subject Pedagogy Research Group and the Director of Doctoral Research.

Headshot of Kim Dora

Fellow & Tutor in Medicine

Professor Kim Dora

Headshot of Kim Dora

Professor Kim Dora

Fellow & Tutor in Medicine

Professor of Microvascular Pharmacology

BHF Senior Basic Science Research Fellow

Education

BSc (ANU), PhD (Tasmania), MA (Oxford)

Professor Dora is a Fellow in Physiological Sciences (Pharmacology) and her research interests focus on cell-cell communication in resistance arteries. Predominantly focusing on signalling pathways within the endothelium, she uses sophisticated and novel techniques to monitor rapid changes in intracellular Ca2+ and how they link to the activation of dilator pathways.

Fellow & Tutor in Engineering

Professor Antonis Papachristodoulou

Professor Antonis Papachristodoulou

Fellow & Tutor in Engineering

Professor of Engineering Science

Education

BA MEng (Cambridge), MA (Oxford), PhD (Caltech)

Professor Antonis Papachristodolou joined the University of Oxford in 2006. Since 2015, he has been an EPSRC Fellow and Director of the EPSRC & BBSRC Centre for Doctoral training in Synthetic Biology. He obtained an MA/MEng degree in Electrical and Information Sciences from the University of Cambridge, U.K.

In 2005 he completed a PhD in Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology, with a PhD Minor in Aeronautics. In 2015 he was awarded the European Control Award for his contributions to robustness analysis and applications to networked control systems and systems biology and the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award. He is Fellow of the IEEE. He serves regularly on Technical Programme Committees for conferences, and was associate editor for Automatica and IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

Hinton Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy

Dr Michail Peramatzis

Dr Michail Peramatzis

Hinton Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy

Clarendon Associate Professor of Philosophy

Education

BA MA (Athens), MA DPhil (Oxford)

Dr Peramatzis’ specialities are ancient philosophy, especially Aristotle’s metaphysics, logic and epistemology and Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology.

Headshot of Afifi al-Akiti

KFAS Fellow in Islamic Studies & Lecturer in Theology

Dr Afifi al-Akiti

Headshot of Afifi al-Akiti

Dr Afifi al-Akiti DPCM DPMS PMP

KFAS Fellow in Islamic Studies & Lecturer in Theology

Supernumerary & Governing Body Fellow

University of Oxford Muslim Chaplain

Education

BA (Belfast), MSt DPhil (Oxford)

Dr Afifi al-Akiti is a Fellow at Worcester College and as one of the University lecturers on Islam he oversees the teaching provision in the Theology & Religion Faculty. He teaches on all aspects of Islamic Studies.

Asa Briggs Fellow & Tutor in Politics

Professor Zofia Stemplowska

Professor Zofia Stemplowska

Asa Briggs Fellow & Tutor in Politics

Professor of Political Theory

Education

MA MPhil DPhil (Oxford)

I joined Oxford in September 2012 from Warwick where I was Associate Professor of Political Theory. Before that I was Lecturer in Political Philosophy at Reading and at Manchester and a Barbara McCoy Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. I studied PPE at New College and completed my MPhil and DPhil at Nuffield College. I grew up in Warsaw.

Fellow & Tutor in Law

Dr James Edwards

Dr James Edwards

Fellow & Tutor in Law

Associate Professor of Law

Education

BCL MSt DPhil (Oxford), MA (Cambridge)

I read law as an undergraduate at Cambridge, before moving to Oxford for postgraduate study. I was brought up just outside York, where I attended my local comprehensive school. Though I worried that the surroundings would be too alien, and the courses too difficult, my student years – in both Cambridge and Oxford – were some of the best of my life. I made great friends, learnt a tremendous amount and fell in love with my subject. I strongly believe that Oxford needs more students from a wide range of different backgrounds. If you’re intellectually curious and hard working, I urge you to apply for a place. Our Admissions Office will happily answer any questions you may have.

Headshot of Xa Sturgis

Director of Ashmolean Museum & Curator of Pictures

Dr Xa Sturgis

Headshot of Xa Sturgis

Dr Xa Sturgis

Director of Ashmolean Museum & Curator of Pictures

Supernumerary & Governing Body Fellow

Education

MA (Oxford), PhD (Courtauld)

Contact

Xa Sturgis has been Director of the Ashmolean Museum since 2014. Before taking up his current post he was Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath (2005-2014) where he oversaw the Museum’s major renovation and extension. From 1990 to 2005 he worked at the National Gallery in a number of roles including Exhibitions and Programmes Curator.

Among the exhibitions he has curated and his publications are: Telling Time (NG, 2000); Bill Viola: the Passions (NG, 2003/4); Rebels and Martyrs: The Image of the Artist in the 19th century (NG, 2006); Presence, The Art of Portrait Sculpture (Holburne, 2012); and Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean (Ashmolean, 2019).

Headshot of Andrew Stephen

L’Oréal Professor of Marketing

Professor Andrew Stephen

Headshot of Andrew Stephen

Professor Andrew Stephen

L’Oréal Professor of Marketing

Professorial Fellow

Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research, Saïd Business School

Education

BSc (Queensland), MPhil PhD (Columbia)

Andrew is one of the world’s leading academic marketing experts. At Oxford Saïd, Andrew is Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research, responsible for all academic matters at the School. As L’Oréal Professor of Marketing, he is the University’s most-senior marketing academic and leads the School’s group of marketing faculty members and research staff, as well as serving as the director of the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative.

Andrew is one of the world’s top marketing academics and is a leading voice on the future of the marketing, media, and advertising industries. His research and industry engagement work focuses predominantly on issues related to new technologies in marketing (such as AI) and how both customers and businesses can benefit from new technologies. He is a strong proponent of the use of data-centric, analytics-enabled, evidence-based approaches to marketing practice. His research over the last decade has made significant contributions to our understandings of digital marketing, social media, advertising and consumer behaviour. He is recognised by the American Marketing Association as one of the top marketing academics in the world (including #1 in the UK), was featured as one of the top 40 business school professors under 40 by Poets and Quants (in 2015), and has won numerous awards for research excellence.

Headshot of Mark Bainbridge

Fellow Librarian & Keeper of the Archives

Mark Bainbridge

Headshot of Mark Bainbridge

Mark Bainbridge

Fellow Librarian & Keeper of the Archives

Data Protection Officer

Education

MA MPhil (Oxford), MSc (City, London)

As Librarian, I am responsible for the College’s libraries. I run the modern library for current members and care for the historic library’s special collections of manuscripts, early printed books, prints and drawings, making them available to researchers. I have been at Worcester since 2011.

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Fellow & Lecturer in Latin

Dr Peta Fowler

Headshot of Peta Fowler

Dr Peta Fowler

Fellow & Lecturer in Latin

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

Peta Fowler is Worcester’s Fellow Lecturer in Latin.

Besse Fellow & Lecturer in French

Dr Alice Violet

Dr Alice Violet

Besse Fellow & Lecturer in French

Education

BA MA DPhil (Paris IV)

My main research interests lie in the fields of corpus linguistics, contrastive linguistics (French-English), phraseology, Construction Grammar and language attitudes. I am particularly interested in linguistic phenomena at the interface between lexis and grammar, and my doctoral thesis, which was a corpus-based investigation of determination in certain French and English prepositional phrases, drew on insights from recent phraseological and constructional work in order to shed light on a problem that had, until then, primarily been treated as purely grammatical. I am also interested in the semantics of prepositions and adverbials, and in discourse markers and connectives. I am currently working on my first book project, which expands on the findings of my doctoral research. My next research projects focus on foreign language teaching (phraseodidactics) and computer-mediated communication (prescriptivism in online interactions).

Headshot of Andrzej Murawski

Bernard Sufrin Fellow & Tutor in Computer Science

Professor Andrzej Murawski

Headshot of Andrzej Murawski

Professor Andrzej Murawski

Bernard Sufrin Fellow & Tutor in Computer Science

Associate Professor of Programming Languages

Education

MSc (Nicolaus Copernicus), DPhil (Oxford)

My research concerns the semantics of programing languages and its applications in software verification. I am interested in a broad spectrum of programming paradigms. Some recent examples include higher-order recursion, probabilistic computation, first- and higher-order state, concurrency, exceptions and objects.

Much of my work is based on game semantics, a modelling theory that uses games to model computation (a brief introduction to the area can be found here).

I like to blend research in semantics with automata theory. The latest examples are collapsible pushdown automata, automata over infinite alphabets and tree-stack automata. I am also interested in probabilistic systems in the context of differential privacy and machine learning. For more details, please see my publications page.

I’m involved in the activities of SIGLOG and currently serve as its Vice-Chair. Between 2014 and 2022 I was the Editor of SIGLOG News, which features highly readable surveys of research relevant to SIGLOG. I am also on the Steering Committee of FoSSaCS.

Headshot of Hauke Marquardt

Fellow & Tutor in Earth Sciences

Professor Hauke Marquardt

Headshot of Hauke Marquardt

Professor Hauke Marquardt

Fellow & Tutor in Earth Sciences

Associate Professor of Solid Earth Geosciences

Education

MSc (Eberhard-Karis), Dr rer nat (FU Berlin)

My research focuses on the experimental exploration of material properties at extreme pressure and temperature conditions typical for planetary interiors. I develop and perform both laboratory experiments and measurements at large-scale synchrotron facilities. I use the results to interpret geophysical observations as well as to improve geophysical models of planetary interior dynamics and deep Earth material cycles.

Headshot of Robert Smith

Fellow & Tutor in Physics

Dr Robert Smith

Headshot of Robert Smith

Dr Robert Smith

Fellow & Tutor in Physics

Associate Professor of Physics

Education

MA MSc PhD (Cambridge)

I am an experimental physicist focusing on using ultracold atomic gases to study many-body quantum phenomena. The first five years of my research career were spent investigating magnetism, superconductivity and quantum phase transitions in a conventional condensed matter setting of the Quantum Matter group at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

Then in 2008, recognising the potential for the study of many body physics, I decided to switch fields to study cold atomic gases in the group of Zoran Hadzibabic. In 2012 I became a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF), also based in Cambridge.

In April 2018 I moved to Oxford and continue to hold my Royal Society URF. I have started a new experimental cold atom group and we are building up an ultracold Erbium experiment to study the effects of long-range dipole-dipole interactions on both equilibrium and non-equilibrium many-body quantum phenomena.

Headshot of Lisa Wedding

Fellow & Tutor in Geography & Sustainability Fellow

Dr Lisa Wedding

Headshot of Lisa Wedding

Dr Lisa Wedding

Fellow & Tutor in Geography & Sustainability Fellow

Associate Professor of Physical Geography

Education

BA MA PhD (Hawaii)

For enquiries about Dr Wedding’s role as Sustainability Fellow, please email sustainability@worc.ox.ac.uk

Dr Lisa Wedding is an Associate Professor in Physical Geography and a Tutorial Fellow of Worcester College, the University of Oxford, where she leads The Oxford Seascape Ecology Lab. She is Associate Editor for the npj Ocean Sustainability journal and Editorial Board Member for the Landscape Ecology journal. Dr Wedding previously held a Research Associate position at the Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University, and was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA.

Dr Wedding’s research focuses on understanding the social-ecological causes and consequences of spatial patterns and ecological processes in the marine environment. Increasingly, her research is positioned at the interface between science and policy and where she often works with a highly interdisciplinary team of lawyers, social scientists, and practitioners to link place-based scientific research findings to inform ocean governance.

Headshot of Tsilly Dagan

Professor of Taxation Law

Professor Tsilly Dagan

Headshot of Tsilly Dagan

Professor Tsilly Dagan

Professor of Taxation Law

Professorial Fellow

Director of the MSc in Taxation

Education

LLB (Tel Aviv), LLM (NYU)

Tsilly Dagan is Professor of Taxation Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of Worcester College. Professor Dagan’s main fields of research and teaching are tax law and policy (both domestic and international) and the interaction of the state and the market. Her book International Tax Policy: Between Competition and Cooperation (Cambridge University Press) is the winner of the 2017 Frans Vanistendael Award for International Tax Law. Professor Dagan studied law at Tel Aviv University (LL.B., S.J.D.) and New York University (LL.M in Taxation) and joined Bar-Ilan University where she served as Associate Dean for Research as well as Editor-in-Chief of the law review and was appointed the Raoul Wallenberg Professor of Law. Professor Dagan has taught and researched as a scholar in residence at the University of Michigan, University of Western Ontario, and Columbia University, and was a member of the Group on Global Justice at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem. She is the co-founder of the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs and the International Tax Governance and Justice Workshop.

Headshot of Leah Trueblood

Career Development Fellow & Tutor in Public and EU Law

Dr Leah Trueblood

Headshot of Leah Trueblood

Dr Leah Trueblood

Career Development Fellow & Tutor in Public and EU Law

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

Education

BA (Alberta), LLB (LSE), MSt DPhil (Oxford)

Leah is a Career Development Fellow in Public Law. She holds degrees in philosophy, law, and the philosophy of law.

She holds first-class degrees in philosophy from the University of Alberta and in law from the London School of Economics. She completed her DPhil research at Oxford in 2019. Her graduate work was funded by University College, Oxford and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She has been the recipient of grants from the John Fell Fund, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust.

Headshot of Michael Mayo

Director of the Visiting Student Programme

Dr Michael Mayo

Headshot of Michael Mayo

Dr Michael Mayo

Director of the Visiting Student Programme

Governing Body Fellow

Education

MA (Harvard), MSc (Edinburgh), DPhil (Oxford)

I run Worcester’s Visiting Student Programme, which welcomes about 28 students from around the world each term. I organize a reading group for undergraduates, graduates, staff, and guests to study Marx’s Capital. I was the first person in my family to go to university; I started a free, state school for inner-city children back in my Boston (US) neighbourhood; and I am involved in a range of programmes to increase access to Oxford.

David Mitchell Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy & Tutor for Graduates

Dr Natalia Waights Hickman

Dr Natalia Waights Hickman

David Mitchell Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy & Tutor for Graduates

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Education

MA (Reading), MA DPhil (Oxford)

My work falls mainly within contemporary philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of action. Most of my research relates either to linguistic (especially semantic) knowledge or to practical knowledge and skill, and sometimes to connections between these. More broadly, my work engages with theories of normativity in relation to skill, factual knowledge, thought and reasoning, and linguistic communication. I also have a general interest in the work of Gilbert Ryle, especially his relatively neglected work on thinking and improvisation.

Headshot of Ian McCulloch

Fellow & Tutor in Chemistry

Professor Iain McCulloch

Headshot of Ian McCulloch

Professor Iain McCulloch FRS

Fellow & Tutor in Chemistry

Professor of Polymer Materials

Education

BSc PhD (Strathclyde)

I began my career after graduating with a PhD in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde at Hoechst Celanese Corporation in New Jersey, USA where I designed, developed and commercialized functional polymers for a range of optical, electronic, and drug-delivery applications, including a water-based antireflective polymer system for photoresist processes with AZ Clariant. I then moved to ISP Corporation in New Jersey to manage the polymer physics research group, working on developing methodology for rheological surface science and electronic products.

In 2000, I returned to the UK as a research manager at Merck Chemicals in Southampton, where I was responsible for developing semiconducting polymers for organic electronic and solar-cell applications. A key aspect of this research was the exploitation of molecular alignment and organization of semiconducting polymers and small molecules in the liquid crystalline phase. At Merck, my group discovered a liquid crystalline thiophene polymer, pBTTT, which subsequently underpinned many research advances in charge transport of organic thin films since its publication in Nature Materials in 2006, which garnered the distinction of one of the top ten most influential papers published in the first five years of publication of the journal.

In 2007, I joined the faculty at Imperial College London to continue research in organic semiconductor materials. At this time, along with colleague Professor Martin Heeney, I cofounded the specialty chemical company Flexink Ltd, supplying a range of electronic materials to leading manufacturers across the world. At Imperial, I continued to explore new chemistries for organic solar cells and transistors, developing the polymer IDTBT, which exhibits disorder free transport, and an early non-fullerene electron acceptor for solar cells, IDTBR.

I joined KAUST, Saudi Arabia, in 2014 and became Director of the KAUST Solar Center in 2016. This work developing new solar cell materials led to the discovery that a ternary materials blend, with two non-fullerene acceptors, could outperform the equivalent binary devices, leading to high power conversion efficiencies, that helped towards a resurgence in the field. I joined the University of Oxford in 2020, where I continue a range of research activities in the development of organic semiconductors for thin-film transistors, photovoltaics, photodetectors, photocatalysis and bioelectronics.

Headshot of Paulo Savaget

Associate Professor of Engineering (Engineering Entrepreneurship)

Professor Paulo Savaget

Headshot of Paulo Savaget

Professor Paulo Savaget

Associate Professor of Engineering (Engineering Entrepreneurship)

Supernumerary & Governing Body Fellow

Education

BA (Minas Gerais), MPhil (Rio de Janeiro), MSc (Sussex), PhD (Cambridge)

Paulo holds a joint appointment between the Department of Engineering Science and the Saïd Business School, and his primary fields of expertise are entrepreneurship, sustainable development, systems change, and innovation management.

He formerly served as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Skoll Centre (University of Oxford) and as an Assistant Professor at Durham University.

Outside academia, he worked as an entrepreneur and as a consultant to large companies, governments, and intergovernmental organisations. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, as a Gates Scholar.

Headshot of Patricia Clavin

Professor of Modern History

Professor Patricia Clavin

Headshot of Patricia Clavin

Professor Patricia Clavin FRHistS FBA

Professor of Modern History

Professorial Fellow

Education

BA PhD (King's College London)

My research and teaching centre on the history of Europe’s transnational and international relations from 1850. I am especially interested in the relationship between states, civil society and markets, nationally and internationally. It has led me to write on the history of Europe in the Great Depression; the origins and outcomes of the two world wars; transnational methodologies; the international history of law, and the League of Nations and United Nations. I am writing a book on the history of ‘human security’ in Europe (which includes Britain). It recovers how notions of security concerned the habitability of the environment, the stability of the capitalist order, and the ‘intactness’ of the human body. I am working together with colleagues in global history and in the department of International Relations on the ‘Histories and Futures of Global Order’, and have a new project on the history of food systems.

I am a Fellow of the British Academy; a Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; an Associate Researcher of the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin; and an Associate Member of the ‘Future of Food’ programme at the Oxford Martin School. I serve on the editorial board of Past and Present.

Edward and Catherine Wray Fellow & Tutor in Engineering

Professor Wouter Mostert

Professor Wouter Mostert

Edward and Catherine Wray Fellow & Tutor in Engineering

Associate Professor of Engineering

Education

BE PhD (Queensland)

Wouter Mostert earned his PhD at the University of Queensland in 2015, on the topic of hydrodynamic stability of magnetohydrodynamic implosions, with application to inertial fusion energy, and in the propagation of shock waves. As a postdoc, he continued in this work at Caltech, before moving to study breaking ocean waves at Princeton University. He continued with this research as an Assistant Professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, before joining Oxford in the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group.

Professor of Pure Mathematics

Professor Emmanuel Breuillard

Professor Emmanuel Breuillard

Professor of Pure Mathematics

Professorial Fellow

Education

BSc (ENS Paris), PhD (Yale)

Emmanuel Breuillard is Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford Mathematical Institute.

Headshot of Mike Huggins

Finance & Estates Bursar

Mike Huggins

Headshot of Mike Huggins

Mike Huggins FCA

Finance & Estates Bursar

Governing Body Fellow

As Finance & Estates Bursar, Mike Huggins has overall responsibility for the College’s finances, endowment, estate, information technology, HR, legal and compliance, risk management and domestic operations. Mike qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1988 and was an Audit partner specialising in charities for twenty-one years. He then became the CFO of a national accounting firm and is the Treasurer, and a Trustee, of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

His PA is Emily Sahadeva (emily.sahadeva@worc.ox.ac.uk 01865 278330).

Headshot of Simon Boddie

University of Oxford Chief Financial Officer

Simon Boddie

Headshot of Simon Boddie

Simon Boddie

University of Oxford Chief Financial Officer

Supernumerary & Governing Body Fellow

Education

MA (Cambridge)

Simon Boddie is Chief Financial Officer for Oxford University. He joined the Board of Oxford Science Enterprises as a University representative in late 2021. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Learning Technologies Group plc, an AIM listed market leader in the fast growing workplace digital learning and talent management market. Prior to joining Oxford University, he was on the Boards of FTSE 250 businesses for 15 years. From 2016 he was Chief Financial Officer of Coats Group plc, the world’s leading industrial thread manufacturer, and previously Group Finance Director of Electrocomponents plc, the global multi-channel provider of industrial and electronic products and solutions. He was also a Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee of Page Group plc, a listed International professional recruitment company, from 2012 to 2021. Prior to this he worked for Diageo, where he held a variety of senior finance positions, Hill Samuel Bank and Price Waterhouse. Simon is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and has an MA from the University of Cambridge.

Headshot of Jennifer Walshe

Fellow & Tutor in Music

Professor Jennifer Walshe

Headshot of Jennifer Walshe

Professor Jennifer Walshe

Fellow & Tutor in Music

Professor of Composition

Education

Bmus (RSAMD), PhD (Northwestern)

‘The most original compositional voice to emerge from Ireland in the past 20 years’ (The Irish Times) and ‘Wild girl of Darmstadt’ (Frankfurter Rundschau), composer and performer Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world. She has been the recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstadt and Akademie Schloss Solitude among others.

Recent projects include TIME TIME TIME, an opera written in collaboration with the philosopher Timothy Morton, and THE SITE OF AN INVESTIGATION, a 30-minute epic for Walshe’s voice and orchestra, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. THE SITE has been performed by Walshe and the NSO, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and also the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra. Walshe has worked extensively with AI. ULTRACHUNK, made in collaboration with Memo Akten in 2018, features an AI-generated version of Walshe. A Late Anthology of Early Music Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance, her third solo album, released on Tetbind in 2020, uses AI to rework canonical works from early Western music history. A Late Anthology was chosen as an album of the year in The Irish Times, The Wire and The Quietus.

Walshe is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Oxford. Her work has been profiled by Alex Ross in The New Yorker and by Andrew Dickson in The New York Times.

Headshot of Helen Parish

Senior Tutor

Dr Helen Parish

Headshot of Helen Parish

Dr Helen Parish

Senior Tutor

Governing Body Fellow

Education

MA (St Andrews), DPhil (Oxford)

Helen Parish joined Worcester from the University of Reading, where she was Professor in Early Modern History and Head of School in Humanities. Her academic work is focused on the history of belief, broadly understood, including the European Reformations, church and clergy, alongside debates over superstition, magic, witchcraft and the supernatural, and the connections between religion and natural history. As Senior Tutor, she is responsible for the strategic planning and oversight of the College’s academic activities, and for undergraduate admissions.

Headshot of Laura Quick

Fellow & Tutor in Theology and Religion

Dr Laura Quick

Headshot of Laura Quick

Dr Laura Quick

Fellow & Tutor in Theology and Religion

Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible

Education

BA (Cardiff), MA (Durham), DPhil (Oxford)

I completed my doctorate in Hebrew Bible at the University of Oxford, before taking up an Assistant Professorship in Religion and Judaic Studies at Princeton University in Autumn 2017. In 2019 I returned to Oxford, where I am currently Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible. I am an editor of Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (Bloomsbury T&T Clark)

Headshot of Ronelle Roth

Fellow & Tutor in Biology

Dr Ronelle Roth

Headshot of Ronelle Roth

Dr Ronelle Roth

Fellow & Tutor in Biology

Associate Professor in Cell and Molecular Plant Biology

Royal Society University Research Fellow

Education

BSc (King's College London), DPhil (Oxford)

Ronelle Roth is Fellow & Tutor in Biology at Worcester College. The focus of Ronelle’s group is to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the cross-talk that exist between plants and beneficial arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Her research is important for sustainable food security as AM symbiosis enhances crop productivity while minimising the reliance on chemical inputs.

Headshot of Leila Ullrich

Supernumerary Fellow & Equalities Fellow

Dr Leila Ullrich

Headshot of Leila Ullrich

Dr Leila Ullrich

Supernumerary Fellow & Equalities Fellow

Associate Professor of Criminology

Education

BSc (LSE), MSc DPhil (Oxford)

Leila is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the Centre for Criminology and a Fellow at Worcester College. She works at the crossroads of international criminal justice, transitional justice, victimology, border criminology and counter-terrorism. She is particularly interested in how global criminal justice institutions create gendered and racialized subjects, and how these subjects (victims, refugees and racialized communities) engage with and resist these processes. She approaches these questions using feminist, decolonial, and critical political economy theories. She is also developing new bottom-up research methods such as qualitative WhatsApp surveying.

Before joining the Centre for Criminology, Leila was a Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. In 2017, she received her DPhil in Criminology from the University of Oxford, which explored the International Criminal Court’s victim engagement in The Hague, Kenya and Uganda. Her monograph, The Blame Cascade: Justice for Victims at the International Criminal Court is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.

Outside the academy, Leila worked as social stability analyst on the Syrian refugee crisis at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Lebanon. She was also the Convenor of the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) network and worked for the International Criminal Court (ICC). She is a member of the editorial board of Feminist Legal Studies.

Headshot of Richard D'Arcy

Fellow & Tutor in Physics

Professor Richard D'Arcy

Headshot of Richard D'Arcy

Professor Richard D’Arcy

Fellow & Tutor in Physics

Associate Professor of Particle Accelerator Physics

Education

MA (Durham), MSci PhD (University College London)

Richard is an Associate Professor in Particle Accelerator Physics at the John Adams Institute. His research specialism is the development of novel particle-acceleration techniques, with a particular focus on plasma-wakefield accelerators.

Following undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Durham and University College London, respectively, he moved to Fermilab (USA) as a Research Associate and then DESY (Germany) as a Research Fellow.

At DESY he was Group Leader for Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators as well as Project Coordinator of the FLASHForward experiment for many years. His current research focus is on answering the ‘luminosity question’ of how best to apply plasma accelerators to particle physics and photon science as well as applications in medicine and industry.

Richard welcomes applications from prospective doctoral students with interests in both novel and conventional accelerator research.

Headshot of Viola Kerr

Director of Development

Viola Kerr

Headshot of Viola Kerr

Viola Kerr

Director of Development

Governing Body Fellow

Viola Kerr is Worcester’s Director of Development and a Governing Body Fellow. She manages the Development and Alumni Relations team and is responsible for delivering our new Development strategy, an essential component in the success of the College’s five-year strategic plan.

Headshot of Weston Struwe

Fellow & Tutor in Biochemistry

Dr Weston Struwe

Headshot of Weston Struwe

Dr Weston Struwe

Fellow & Tutor in Biochemistry

Associate Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Education

BSc (Wisconsin), PhD (New Hampshire)

I am a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow based in the Department of Chemistry and Kavli Institute for NanoScience Discovery. Prior to taking up my fellowship, I was Chief Scientific Officer of Refeyn, a University of Oxford spin-out based on mass photometry – a single molecule mass imaging technique I helped establish. I have been in Oxford since 2012, in both the Chemistry and Biochemistry Departments as a Post-Doctoral Researcher and Senior Research Associate where I studied the molecular mechanisms by which viruses glycosylate their surface proteins and developed new ways to understand how oligosaccharides interact with host receptors, innate immune lectin receptors and anti-viral lectins. Prior to moving to Oxford, I worked at the newly formed National Institute for Research and Training (NIBRT), a non-profit institute established to support research and education in biopharma globally. At NIBRT, I had the opportunity to work closely with a number of biotherapeutic companies to address various challenges in the analysis and process development of protein-based drugs. I obtained my BS from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and PhD from the University of New Hampshire.