Dr Laura Varnam, our Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature, appeared on the podcast Backlisted again on June 18th 2024. Laura is a regular guest on the literary podcast, having appeared on the episodes on Daphne du Maurier, Beowulf, Elizabeth Jane Howard, and MR James. This episode focused on the fourteenth-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem that Laura teaches every year to our second-year English students. You can read more here.

The Revd Dr Matthew Cheung Salisbury, Lecturer in Music, has been awarded The King’s Coronation Medal in recognition of his involvement in the planning of last year’s Coronation. As National Liturgical Adviser to the Church of England, Matthew was involved in the revision of the Coronation rite itself as well as the ways in which the wider Church of England marked the Coronation.

Angela Unsworth MBE, Domestic Bursar of University College, is one of the organisers of the inaugural Oxford Breast Buddy Group’s (OBBG) fashion show and gala dinner fundraiser taking place at the University Examination Schools on 4 October 2024, at the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You can read more here.

The College is delighted to be able to congratulate Professor Rudy Marcus on the endowment of the Rudolph A Marcus Center for Theoretical Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The full announcement made by Caltech can be seen on the Caltech website

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Dr Christian E Mammen (1993, DPhil Law) is the lead author of a new white paper titled “Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, and the Requirement of Human Authors and Inventors in Copyright and Patent Law” published in July. You can read more here.

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Univ’s Mulberry Lawn at the Univ North site provided a huge welcome for almost 100 pre-school children this July, with a special interactive zone just around the corner from which the site could be viewed safely by the children. You can read more here.

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Jess Crompton received a travel grant from the University College Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund 2023-24 enabling her to attend a large conference in Montpellier related to Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology as well as being the only PhD student selected to give a short talk on her DPhil work. You can read more here.

Bronwyn Gavine attended the 2024 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) conference in Singapore, presenting one of her DPhil projects as well as touring the city and visiting attractions such as Gardens by the Bay. You can read more here.

Professor Maren Schentuleit, Lady Wallis Budge Fellow and Associate Professor of Egyptology and Coptic Studies was appointed Director of the Griffith Institute for the academic year 2024/25.

Professor Sarah Harper CBE, Clore Professor of Gerontology, Supernumerary Fellow, and Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, discussed the differences in ageing between English and French women, in an article in the Daily Telegraph. She was also interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Election 2024: Nick Robinson and Justin Webb about generational voting in the forthcoming general election.

Professor Tasmin Mather, Supernumerary Fellow in Earth Sciences has written an article “What Volcanoes Tell Us” on her three greatest revelations while writing Adventures in Volcanoland. She has also published “Unearthing the Secrets of Volcanoes and Rocks” focusing on Earth’s history with an exploration of all things geological.

Dr Ailish Campbell (2002, DPhil Politics) has been appointed Canada’s Ambassador to the European Union since 2021. Previously, she was Chief Trade Commissioner and Assistant Deputy Minister leading Canada’s global trade services team in over 160 offices worldwide. Ambassador Campbell welcomes outreach from Univ grads and students on international issues.

Professory Catherine Holmes, A D M Cox Old Members’ Tutorial Fellow in Medieval History and Professor of Medieval History, organised a workshop at Univ in June on “The Horn of Africa, East and South Africa and the Global Middle Ages”, together with Dr Alebachew Belay-Birru, an Africa Oxford (AfOx) Visiting Fellow from Debre Berhan University in Ethiopia.

Professor Laura Herz, Supernumerary Fellow in Physics, was awarded a five-year EPSRC Open Fellowship and was appointed to the EPSRC Strategic Advisory Team on Energy and Decarbonisation recently.

Celebrating 420 years of Chinese Books at the Bodleian Libraries, Professor Tian Yuan Tan 陳靝沅, Professorial Fellow and Shaw Professor of Chinese, co-organised the “Building and Researching Chinese Libraries: Preservation, Digitisation, and Dissemination” Conference held at the Weston Library on 6-7 June.

Dr Lea Rees, Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellow in Egyptology, co-organised the Summer School on Ancient Egyptian and Sudanese Art in Oxford.

Dr Robert Conway (2013, Medicine), Non-Stipendiary Lecturer in Medicine, recently received an Early Career Teaching Excellence Award from the Medical Sciences Division at Oxford. At Univ, Robert teaches the clinical medical students in the team of Professor Najib Rahman, Supernumerary Fellow. He is also currently an Emergency Medicine doctor based in the Thames Valley Deanery and is the Joan and Richard Doll Fellow at Green Templeton College.