Our people

Dr Martin Galpin is Director of Studies and Associate Head of Department (Teaching) for the Department of Chemistry. Martin studied for his MChem in the Department of Chemistry at Oxford, before moving to Balliol College in 2001 to undertake his DPhil with Professor David Logan. He continued in the Logan group as a postdoctoral research associate and held a Junior Research Fellowship at Worcester College from 2006 to 2010. In 2011, Martin took up the position of Departmental Lecturer in Mathematics for Chemistry and was appointed to a Supernumerary Fellowship at University College. He became Deputy Director of Studies in 2017, and Director of Studies and Associate Head of Department (Teaching) in 2023.

I have a longstanding interest in teaching maths to scientists. I have a particular interest in developing modern teaching methods to complement more traditional approaches in lectures and tutorials, often through the use of computer software and visualisations to help students explore the subject in new ways. In the University’s Department of Chemistry, I am the Deputy Director of Studies. I chair the Graduate Studies Committee and have responsibility for the Chemistry Department’s central programme of graduate training, and I support the Director of Studies in the running and development of the undergraduate Chemistry course and the undergraduate admissions exercise. My Departmental teaching roles include lecturing parts of the Mathematics for Chemistry course and the MSc in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry.

My longstanding research interests have been in the general area of condensed matter theory, the aim of which is to understand the physical properties of solids, liquids and related phases of matter. Of particular interest to me are so-called ‘correlated electron systems’. The electrons within these materials interact so strongly with each other that they move collectively rather than independently, resulting in the emergence of interesting and complex physical properties. My current research is focused on electron correlations in magnetic materials, and involves both analytical (‘pen-and-paper’) and computer-based calculations using Quantum Monte Carlo techniques. More recently, I have collaborated with other members of the Chemistry Department on a range of problems, including on aspects of biophysical chemistry, the kinetics of complex organic and inorganic chemical reactions, and the statistical modelling of breath acetone measurements for the detection of type 1 diabetes.

For a full list of publications, see Martin’s website

Mrs Sue Geddes is Executive Assistant to the Provost, David Isaac.

The Book of Psalms has been a consistent focus in my research: in the 1980s I completed a doctorate at Keble College which countered the then dominant cultic and historical approach to the psalms by reading them as prayers with a more universal, personal appeal.   The Poems and Psalms of the Hebrew Bible was published in 1994. In the late 1990s I became increasingly interested in ‘Reception History’ as a method for understanding the multivalent nature of biblical texts, especially the Psalms. As this required an appreciation of over two millennia of cultural history, both Jewish and Christian, not only looking at the translation and commentary tradition but also the reception of psalms in liturgy, art, music, poetry, film, and social, political and ethical discourse, this developed into a twenty-five year research project. Psalms through the Centuries was published in three volumes, in 2008; 2018; and 2022. Throughout this time I also published several other books and some sixty articles. In 2022 a Festschrift appeared, edited by Katherine Southwood and Holly Morse,  aptly summarising my ongoing research interests by the title: Psalms and the Use of the Critical Imagination. Essays in Honour of Professor Susan Gillingham.

I have stayed mostly in Oxford since my doctorate days, having taught for over forty years for the Faculty of Theology and Religion and in various colleges. I served the Faculty in many different guises until I retired in 2019;  I focused especially on access initiatives and undergraduate welfare. Throughout this period I acquired several international academic associations, especially with the Universities of the Bahamas, Baylor TX, Bonn, Georgia GA, Göttingen, Malta, Pretoria, Reykjavík, Strasbourg, Upsala, and Vienna, as well as various theological seminaries, especially the Pontifical Bible Institute in Rome, the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, and the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria VA. I have given some sixty conference papers and named lectures, mostly on issues relating to studies on the Psalms and multivalent readings of Scripture, many in the context of Jewish/Christian discourse. I participated in several research projects in Oxford during this time, the most notable being  the co-founding and overseeing of the Oxford Psalms Network with TORCH, along with two Medievalists from the English Faculty. This was chosen as one of four impact submissions in the recent REF. Having run out of funding we are seeking its reincarnation as another TORCH project, provisionally entitled ‘The Psalms in Sacred Time and Sacred Space’.

I was appointed as a lecturer at Worcester College in 1988, and for some years held a variety of other college lectureships. In 1995 I gained a permanent post as University Lecturer in Old Testament and Fellow and Tutor in Theology at Worcester. Since that appointment I have held a variety of college offices, including a long stint as Tutor for Women. I’ve always been involved in the life of the Chapel, and served for several years on the College’s Garden Committee. One other piece of history was my marriage in 2000 to the then Provost of the College, Dick Smethurst, when I also became also involved in alumni relations.

Reception History is now a seminal discipline throughout the Humanities in general and the Faculty of Theology and Religion in particular. I was made a Reader in 2008, and a Professor, in 2014; I was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity (DD) in 2015, being only the second woman to receive such an award, and was given a Professorial Distinction award in 2016. I prize teaching as much as research, so to have been shortlisted by Oxford SU for the ‘Most Acclaimed Lecturer of the Year’ award in 2018 was a particular pleasure. I was elected as President of the Society for Old Testament Study from 2018-19 and am an active member of the Society for Biblical Literature. I retired in 2019 and was given the title of Emeritus Professor of the Hebrew Bible and more recently was elected as an Emeritus Fellow at Worcester College. I was ordained as a Permanent Deacon in 2018 and since then have been licensed as a Curate to St Barnabas Church in Jericho. I was made a Canon Theologian at Exeter Cathedral in 2019. I am currently writing another commentary on the Psalms in the Penguin Short Classics Series, returning to my earliest research on the psalms, this time as a ‘universal classic’.

Reception History, especially of the Psalms, specialising in the influence of music, art and poetry in the cultural history of psalmody; literary studies, especially of individual psalms and the Psalter as a whole; history of religion, especially the influence of ancient Near Eastern myth and ritual in ancient Israelite religion; biblical archaeology, especially ancient iconography; biblical poetry, especially in the study of metaphor and its relationship with ancient iconography; biblical hermeneutics, especially multivalent readings of biblical texts; feminist studies of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, especially in the history of its development; studies in the Prophets, especially the interrelationship between prophecy and psalmody throughout the Old and New Testaments; homiletics, especially the understanding  and appropriation of psalmody in Jewish and Christian faith traditions today;  interfaith  discourse, especially the use of the Psalms in Judaism, Christianity and Islam; therapeutic use of the psalms, especially at the interdisciplinary and interfaith level.

Selected Publications:

Books

• 2022    Psalms Through the Centuries: A Reception History Commentary on Psalms 73-151. Volume Three. Blackwell Bible Commentaries (eds. A. Mein, L.S. Tiemeyer, C. Rowland and K. Kovacs), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing  ISBN 9781119542254 hb    97811195442261 eb
• 2022    Psalms and the Use of the Critical Imagination. Essays in Honour of Professor Susan Gillingham (eds. K.E. Southwood and H. Morse),  The Library of the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies 710, London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark  ISBN 978-0-5676-9632-8
• 2018    Psalms Through the Centuries: A Reception History Commentary on Psalms 1-72. Volume Two. Blackwell Bible Commentaries (eds. J.A. Sawyer, J. Kovacs, C. Rowland and D.M. Gunn), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing  ISBN 9781118830567  hb  and  (2020)  ISBN 9781119480181 pb
• 2013    A Journey of Two Psalms: The Reception of Psalms 1 and 2 in Jewish and Christian Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199652419
• 2013    (ed.) Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms. Conflict and Convergence. (Proceedings of the Oxford Conference on Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms)  Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199699544 hb   and (2015)  ISBN 9780198753650 pb
• 2009    Encountering Burges: Reflections on the Art and Architecture of the Chapel at Worcester College, Oxford, London: Millennium Publishing ISBN 97801906507473
• 2008    Psalms through the Centuries, Volume One, Blackwell Bible Commentaries (eds. J.A. Sawyer, J. Kovacs, C. Rowland and D.M. Gunn), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing  ISBN 9780631218555. Pb (2012) with new Preface and minor revisions ISBN 9780470674901
• 2002    The Image, the Depths and the Surface: Multivalent approaches to Biblical Study, JSOT Sup 354, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press ISBN 1841272973
• 1998    One Bible, Many Voices: Different Approaches to Biblical Studies, London: SPCK ISBN 0802846610 hb and ISBN  028104886-X pb
• 1994    The Poems and Psalms of the Hebrew Bible, Oxford Bible Series, Oxford: OUP ISBN 0192132423hb and ISBN 0192132431pb

Articles

(Several articles from 2022 and 2023 are not yet in print.)

• 2023    ‘A Song “Forever New” in the Psalms’, in New Song. Biblical Hebrew Poetry as Jewish and Christian Scripture for the 21st Century  (eds. S.D. Campbell, R.G. Rohlfing Jr. and R.S. Briggs),  Studies in Scripture and Biblical Theology,  Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press pp. 213-227  ISBN 978-1683596912
• 2022    ‘The Reception of the Exodus Tradition in the Psalter’  in The Reception of Exodus Motifs in Jewish and Christian Literature. “Let My People Go!” (eds. B. Kowalski and S.E. Docherty), Themes in Biblical Narrative 30.  Leiden: Brill, pp. 36-55   ISBN 978-90-47111-5 hb  ISBN 978-90-04047112-2 eb
• 2022    ‘Psalms’  in Encyclopedia of Jewish-Christian Relations   https://doi.org/10.1515/ejcro.13374070
• 2022    ‘The Psalms’ in Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 4e (general editor A. Louth) , Oxford: OUP pp. 1588-89  ISBN-13: 9780199642465  hb  ISBN: 9780191744396 eb
• 2022    ‘The Arts: Representational, Performative and Literary’ in The Biblical World, second edition (ed. Katharine Dell), Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 646-664     ISBN 978 1b138 932920
• 2021    ‘The Egyptian Hallel: A Paradigm of the Correlation between Narrative and Liturgy in the Formation of the Hebrew Psalter’ in The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter. The Book of Psalms Between Ancient Versions, Material Transmission and Canonical Exegesis, Erich Zenger in memoriam  (eds. G. Barbiero, M.Pavan and J. Schnocks),  Forschung zum Alten Testament 151.  Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck  Verlag, pp. 347-66  ISBN 978 3161608476 hb    ISBN 9783161608483 eb
• 2020    ‘Das schöne Confitemini’: Engaging with Erich Zenger’s Reading of Psalm 118 from a Jewish and Christian Reception History Perspective’ in “Mit meinem Gott überspringe ich eine Mauer”. “By my God I can leap over a wall!’. Interreligiöse Horizonte in den Psalmen und Psalmenstudien.  Interreligious Horizons in Psalms and Psalms Studies, In Gedenken an Erich Zenger (*5. Juli 1939 † 4. April 2010). Herders Biblische Studien 96 (herausgegben von C. Frevel und Knut Backhaus), Freiburg: Herder Verlag 2000  pp. 288-306  ISBN 978 3451398001
• 2020    ‘Il Sal 137 qui e ora: la ‹‹ storia della ricezione ›› come modo di videre e di ascoltare I salmi’ in Il Salterio e il Libro di Giobbe. Seminario per studiosi e docent di sacra scrittura, Roma, 20-24 gennario 2020 (ed.P. Bovati),   ebiblicum 6, Gregorian & Biblical Press, Roma 2020, pp. 95-117 (trad. Dall’inglese  F. Iodice).
• 2020    ‘“Like a bridegroom” and “like a strong man“: The Reception of Two Similes in Psalm 19:5’ in Fromme und Frevler.  Studien zu Psalmen und Weisheit. Festschrift für Hermann Spieckermann zum 70. Geburtstag (herausgeben von Corinna Körting und Reinhard Gregor Kratz), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. 2020, pp. 41-54.  ISBN 978 316157536-5
• 2019    ‘Jewish and Christian Approaches to Suffering in the Reception of Psalm 137’, in “Be exalted, o God, above the Heavens!” (Psalm 108:6). Studies in the Book of Psalms and Its Reception Presented to Phil J. Botha on his 65th Birthday (eds. G.T.M. Prinsloo and B. Weber), Old Testament Essays New Series: Journal of the Old Testament Society of South Africa  32/2 ) pp. 441-460  ISSN 2312-3621
• 2019    ‘Psalms of David, Psalms of Christ’  in Rooted and Grounded:  Faith Formation and the Christian Tradition (ed. S. Croft), Norwich: Canterbury Press, pp. 69-85  ISBN 978 1786221681
• 2019    ‘ “The righteous shall inherit the land and live in it forever” (Ps. 37:29).  Towards a theology of Human and Divine Justice through the Reception History of Psalm 37’  in Zur Theologie des Psalters und der Psalmen. Beiträge in memoriam Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, Bonner Biblische Beiträge Band 189 (Ulrich Berges, Johannes Bremer und Till Magnus Steiner Hg.), DFG-Projekt, University of Bonn (ed. J. Bremer et al), Bonn: Bonn University Press and V&R Unipress, pp. 411-27 ISBN  9783847109976
• 2019    ‘Postexilic Poetic Traditions in The Writings’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Writings of the Hebrew Bible (ed. D.F. Morgan), New York and Oxford: OUP pp. 132-50 ISBN 9780190212438
• 2018    ‘Reception History, Biblical Studies and the Issue of Multivalency. Annual Aquinas Lecture, Faculty of Theology, University of Malta,’ Melita Theologica 68/1, pp. 1-15 ISSN 1012-9588
• 2017    ‘Psalms in Worship’, in The Dictionary of the Bible in Ancient Media (eds. T Thatcher, C. Keith, R. F. Person Jr. and E. Stern), New York and London: Bloomsbury and T&T Clark, pp. 315-319 ISBN 9780567222497
• 2017    ‘I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre’ (Psalm 49:4). Hebrew Psalmody as Lyric Poetry’, Journal of Literary Theory 11/1 pp. 40-50  ISSN 1862-5290
• 2017    ‘The Levitical Singers and the Compilation of the Hebrew Psalter’ in Trägerkreise in den Psalmen. DFG-Projekt, University of Bonn (eds. F.L. Hossfeld, J. Bremer and T. Steiner), Bonner Biblische Beiträge Band 178, Bonn: V&R Unipress, pp. 35-59  ISBN 9783847106111
• 2016    ‘The Psalms Then and Now: “Reception History” as a way of Seeing and Hearing the Psalms (Annual Bedell Lecture, National Bible Society of Ireland), Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 39, pp. 1-16  ISSN  0332-4427
• 2016    ‘The Psalms and Poems of the Hebrew Bible’ in The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Companion (ed. J. Barton), Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 206-36 ISBN 978 0691154718
• 2016    ‘David and Christ Sing the Psalms: the Psalter as Prophecy and Liturgy’ in A Book of Psalms from Eleventh-Century Constantinople. On the Complex of Texts and Images in Vat.gr.752 (eds. B. Crostini and G. Peers), Studi e Testi Series, Rome: Vatican Library Publications, pp. 241-260 ISBN 978 8821009521
• 2015    ‘Psalms 105 and 106 and the Participation in History through Liturgy’ in Hebrew Bible Ancient Israel, Vol. 4: The Historical Psalms, pp. 450-475  ISSN 2192-2276
• 2015    ‘Psalms 90-92: Text, images, music’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 89/3: Le Psautier: poésie et théologie, pp. 255-76.  ISSN  2259-0285
• 2015    ‘Psalms 90-106: Book Four and the Covenant with David’, European Judaism 48/2, pp. 83-101 ISSN 00143006
• 2015    ‘”My mouth shall speak wisdom: I shall incline my ear to a proverb” (Ps. 49.3,4): The Wisdom Tradition and the Psalms’ in Wisdom and the Wise. Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, (ed. J.J. Jarick), London: T & T Clark, pp. 277-309 ISBN 978 0567663160
• 2015    ‘The Doxologies and the Editing of the Hebrew Psalter’, in “Canterò in eterno le misericordie del Signore” (Sal 89,2). Studi in onore del prof. Gianni Barbiero in occasione del suo settantesimo compleanno (eds. S. M. Attard and M. Pavan), Analecta Biblica – Studia 3; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, pp. 205-219 ISBN 978 8876536717
• 2015    Biblical Studies on Holiday? A Personal View of Reception History’ in Reception History and Biblical Studies. Theory and Practice (eds. J. Lyons and A. Mein), New York and London: Continuum Publishing, pp. 17-30  ISBN 978 0567660107
• 2014    ‘The Levites and the Editorial Composition of the Psalms’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms (ed. William P. Brown), New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.201-13 ISBN 978 0199783335
• 2014    ‘Worcester Chapel, William Burges and the Art of Illumination’ in Worcester: Portrait of an Oxford College (eds. J. Bate and J. Goodman), London: Millennium Publishing, pp. 82-9  ISBN 9781906507725
• 2013    ‘ “Moab is my Washpot.” (Ps.60:8 [MT10]): Another Look at the MLF (Moabite Liberation Front)’ in Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines (eds. J. K. Aitken, J. M. S. Clines and C. M. Maier), Atlanta, GA:  SBL, pp. 61-71 ISBN 978 1589839250
• 2013    ‘Praying to the gods in the Psalms: Pursuing John Barton’s “Plain Meaning” Approach’ in Biblical Interpretation and Method. Essays in Honour of John Barton (eds. K.J. Dell and P.M. Joyce), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 63-73  ISBN 978 0999645534
• 2013    ‘The Reception of Psalm 137 in Jewish and Christian Traditions’ in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms. Conflict and Convergence. (ed. S.E. Gillingham), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 64-82  ISBN 978 0199699544
• 2012    ‘Entering and Leaving the Psalter: Psalms 1 and 150 and the Two Polarities of Faith’ in Let us Go up to Zion. Essays in Honour of H.G.M. Williamson on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (eds. I. Provan and M.J. Boda), SVT 153, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012, pp. 383-93  ISBN 978 9004215986
• 2012    ‘Seeing and Hearing Psalm 137’ in Mótun Menningar/ Shaping Culture. Afmoelisrit/Festschrift Gunnlaugur Jónsson (ed. K. Eyjar), Reykjavík, Hid Íslenska Bókmenntafélag, pp.91-107  ISBN 978 9979663003

Professor Goldsmith’s research concerns establishing the robustness and security of systems, especially in ad-hoc and pervasive computing environments, from underpinning theory through ethical and psychological issues to practical application. With a background in Formal Methods and Concurrency Theory, Michael was one of the pioneers of automated cryptoprotocol analysis. His research work has investigated a range of Technology Strategy Board and industrial or government-funded projects ranging from highly mathematical semantic models to multidisciplinary research at the social-technical interface. He was Co-Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training  in Cybersecurity and is currently an Associate Director of Oxford’s Cyber Security Centre, and active in the IAAC Academic Liaison Panel.

View all publications on the Department of Computer Science website

Emma is Worcester’s Archivist and can be contacted for enquiries about the College Archives and the College’s pictures.

Originally from Lancashire, the Revd Marcus Green arrived in Oxford as a student in the mid-80s and read History at Merton and Theology at Wycliffe Hall, before being ordained into the Church in Wales. As far as he knows, he was the first member of his family ever to go to university or get ordained.

He is passionate about worship in the Christian community, particularly music in worship, and has led choirs, orchestras, contemporary worship groups and even jazz bands in different church settings. His first book, Salvation’s Song, is a theology of the cross as worship.

More recently, both nationally and especially within Oxford Diocese, Marcus has been a prominent voice calling for LGBTQ+ equality within the Church. Simply put, he believes that every person is equal and equally loved by God. His second book, The Possibility of Difference, a biblical affirmation of such inclusion, is published by Kevin Mayhew.

Marcus shares his house with a large and (too) friendly Springer Spaniel called Harry, skis badly, is part of the Red half of Manchester, loves opera, runs a community swing band, once won The Weakest Link, and has been known to go to Italy just for the ice cream.

I have spent all my working life in Oxford within the collegiate University. For the majority of the time I was based in the University Computing Services (now IT Services), where I ran a statistical consultancy and was responsible for delivering training to University staff and students in the use of a variety of statistical software.

I am a Chartered Statistician and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and have served on the Society’s Working Party on Statistical Computing and on the Committee of its General Applications Section. I have also been the Algorithm Editor of its Applied Statistics journal, and co-edited the book Applied Statistics Algorithms. I am the Statistical Advisor to the Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training, a member of the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) and an Associate of Ashridge Management College.

My main responsibility in College is teaching the first-year course in Probability and Statistics to Experimental Psychology and PPL students. I also provide tutorials for second-year Psychology students for their paper in Experimental Design and Methods.

My research interests lie in the fields of Applied Statistics and Statistical Computing, particularly the design and construction of algorithms.

I have published on topics as diverse as intubation of new-born babies, back pain in nurses, depression in the elderly, and the European meat trade. I have also served as the Algorithm Editor of the ‘Applied Statistics’ journal, and co-edited the book ‘Applied Statistics Algorithms’.

I have been at Worcester for more than ten years and teach papers at all stages of our undergraduate courses in Theology & Religion and Philosophy & Theology. I specialise in modern theology and the history of doctrine, with a particular interest in theology and the arts, particularly poetry, film and music. I am the author of Grace (SCM 2013) and editor, with John Barton, of The New Testament and the Church (Bloomsbury 2015), and I have published articles and chapters on systematic and doctrinal theology, as well as on the Oxford Movement and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. I am Reviews Editor of the journal New Blackfriars. I am ordained in the Church of England and serve as Associate Archdeacon of Oxford. I am married to Beatrice, who teaches English Literature at Trinity College, and we have two sons. My enthusiasms include wine, poetry, Thomas Aquinas, Jane Austen, Wagner, Wittgenstein and Queens Park Rangers football club.

Tim spent his childhood in Sheffield and came to Oxford for his undergraduate in 2015. He completed his part II in the Perkin group investigating the structure and forces present in thin films of water-in-salt electrolyte. He began his DPhil in 2019 and is interested in highly concentrated aqueous electrolytes. Outside of work, Tim enjoys baking and reading.

Carmen is responsible for managing our database systems and recording donations.

I studied Philosophy and Computer Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and then moved to Scotland to pursue a PhD in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. My doctoral studies were supported by PETAF (Perspectival Thoughts and Facts), as part of the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (European Commission Funding). I graduated with a thesis on Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mathematics under the supervision of Sarah Broadie and Katherine Hawley. In 2015, I moved to Oxford to start as a stipendiary lecturer in philosophy at Wadham and St Hilda’s Colleges while also maintaining a part-time position as “Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin” (≅ fixed-term lecturer) at Bonn University, Germany. My research focuses on the nature of mathematical objects in Aristotle and Plato, with a particular interest in how their views tie in with their more general views in epistemology and ontology.

Since 2016, I have been a stipendiary lecturer in philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford, while also teaching casually for several Oxford Colleges and visiting student programmes. I teach a wide range of philosophy papers including General Philosophy, Plato’s Meno and Euthyphro (Greek), Early Greek Philosophy (Greek), Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic, Aristotle on Nature, Life and Mind (Greek/translation), Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Greek/trans), Plato’s Republic (Greek/trans), Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist (Greek/trans), Knowledge & Reality, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind, Early Modern Philosophy, Kant, Ethics and Feminist Philosophy.

In 2022, I completed my PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging at the Department of Psychology, University of York. Currently, I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford.

When we form a new memory, it is in a fragile state. I am interested brain rhythms during sleep and how they help transform these fragile memories into durable representations. In my research, I investigate memory retention in humans using behavioural measures, and brain rhythms during wake and sleep using MEG and EEG. To further promote memory consolidation during sleep, I also use interventions such as targeted memory reactivation – a technique where sounds, which have been linked to memories during previous wake, are replayed during specific sleep stages.

• Guttesen, A. á. V., Gaskell, M. G., & Cairney, S. A. (2023). Delineating memory reactivation in sleep with verbal and non-verbal retrieval cues. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.02.530762 
• Guttesen, A. á V., Gareth Gaskell, M., Madden, E. V., Appleby, G., Cross, Z. R., & Cairney, S. A. (2022). Sleep loss disrupts the neural signature of successful learning. Cerebral Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac159 
• Strachan, J. W., Guttesen, A. á V., Smith, A. K., Gaskell, M. G., Tipper, S. P., & Cairney, S. A. (2019). Investigating the formation and consolidation of incidentally learned trust. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000752 
• Ashton, J. E., Harrington, M. O., Guttesen, A. á V., Smith, A. K., & Cairney, S. A. (2019). Sleep Preserves Physiological Arousal in Emotional Memory. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-42478-2
• Cairney, S. A., Guttesen, A. á V., El, N. M., & Staresina, B. P. (2018). Memory Consolidation Is Linked to Spindle-Mediated Information Processing during Sleep. Current Biology: CB, 28(6), 948-954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.01.087 

To date I have worked primarily on innovative and experimental prose fiction of the twentieth century. My research takes transnational modernism and book history as its major points of reference. My first book, The nouveau roman and Writing in Britain After Modernism (OUP, 2019), recovers the importance of the French nouveau roman to writers and publishers active in midcentury Britain as they debated what it meant to be ‘new’. In relation to this project, I have also published extensively on late modernist novelists who were active in Britain in the 1950s-70s, including Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes, B. S. Johnson, Ann Quin, and Eva Tucker. My interests in the intersection in the twentieth century of French and British culture are also explored through work on the circulation of existentialism and its ideas in Anglophone contexts: published work in this line includes a book chapter on Doris Lessing and Jean-Paul Sartre, and a journal article on Dorothy Richardson and Gabriel Marcel.

I am currently beginning work on a new project that proposes to historicize contemporary platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Youtube through a comparison with the publishing industry of the twentieth century. This project takes on a variety of themes, such as the publishing industry and the emergence of the data industry, the development and regulation of supranational publishing markets, the literary oeuvre as appreciating asset, and literary labour and industrial relations in publishing. As scoping exercises for this project I ran an experimental book club about privacy and the data of digital literary reading, and I am working on an article that explores midcentury debates on whether the money earned from published literary works constitutes income earned from labour or from an asset.

I also maintain a long-term interest in the modernist writer Dorothy Richardson. My work on Richardson takes in scholarly publications, editorial work, and public engagement. I am a member of the editorial boards of Pilgrimages: The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies, and of the Oxford Editions of Richardson’s fiction and letters, the first volume of which was published in 2020. I am the editor of the Oxford edition of Interim and Deadlock  – the fifth and sixth novels of Richardson’s novel-sequence Pilgrimage – which is due for publication in 2024.

I have taught in Oxford at both Faculty- and college-level for some years, working with college students on Prelims Paper 1 (Introduction to Literature), Paper 3 (Literature in English 1830–1910), and Paper 4 (Literature in English 1910–Present), as well as FHS Paper 5 (Literature in English, 1760–1830). I have convened and co-convened the Paper 6 Courses ‘Writers and the Cinema’, ‘The Avant-Garde’, and ‘Literature’s Silences’, as well as the MSt C-Courses ‘Fiction in Britain Since 1945: History, Time and Memory’, ‘Some Versions of Modernism’, ‘Political Reading’, and ‘Literature and the Platform’; I also convened the ‘Materials Texts’ strand of the MSt B-Courses. My own lectures series include ‘Some Versions of Modernism’ and ‘Theory in Context’; I regularly contribute to lecture circuses such as ‘Adventures in Form’ and ‘Black Letters Matter’. I have supervised numerous undergraduate and Master’s dissertations on a range of 19th-21st century writing, theory, and cinema, as well as acting as co-supervisor for doctoral theses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century topics.