Postgraduate research

Amelia Cordwell, PhD in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Studying the interactions of young planets with their natal protoplanetary discs.

Miranda Evans, PhD in Archaeology
The proteomics of pottery and its residues: applications to ancient foodways.

Aman Kang, PhD in Archaeology
Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS): utilising new methods to unravel Neanderthal and AMH cognition from worked bone.

Gabrielle Russo, PhD in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
The representation of the Turkic military guard in ninth-century Arabic praise writing

Monami Bhuyan, PhD in Zoology
Investigating the multifunctionalities of insect cuticular lipids, such as waterproofing, joint lubrication, and foot adhesion, specifically how the complex insect cuticular lipid chemical composition affects their physical properties and, consequently, their functions.

Rebecca Boston, PhD in Toxicology at the MRC Toxicology Unit
Evaluating the relationship between the human immune system and the gut microbiome in the context of patients with immunodeficiency.

Marie de la Burgade, PhD in Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
Investigating the trunk neural crest leader cell's asymmetric division and fate in vivo in Zebrafish, focusing on the interactions between mechanics and signalling pathways.

Ella Taylor, PhD in Biological Sciences at the Babraham Institute
Investigating the effect of RNA structure modulation by RNA helicases during B-lymphocyte activation.

Juliette Limozin, PhD at the MRC Biostatistics Unit
Developing statistical methodologies for causal inference in longitudinal settings, focusing on the multiple emulated target trial approach.

Nuzli Karam, PhD in Bioelectronics
Developing a novel three-dimensional electrode sensing array with tissue-like properties for the study of cerebral brain organoids.

Aliah Burbayea, PhD in Chemistry
Investigating the synthesis of supramolecular metal-organic cages with alkaline earth and transition metal vertices. Current work explores structural control and host-guest applications within these architectures.

Vaidehi Roy Chowdhury, PhD in Chemistry
Rational design of antibodies and antibody engineering to manipulate challenging protein targets in complex environments.

Cecily Bateman, PhD in Classics
The use of Classics by the Far-Right in Europe and America from 1945 to the present.

Christiane-Marie Cantwell, PhD in Classics
Cultural and religious changes in Roman Gaul through the lens of economic sociology, via a computational methodology. Current project focuses on the Gallo-Roman votive practice.

Rhiannon Smith, PhD in Classics
Focus on Classical Linguistics, specialising in Latin female onomastics.

Meghna Birla, PhD in Clinical Biochemistry
My project uses dynamic subcellular proteomics to uncover novel regulators of β3-adrenergic signalling and energy metabolism in adipocytes.

Lucy Davis
Investigating the biochemical mechanisms of insulin resistance. Focus on insulin stimulated lipid synthesis, adipose tissue inflammation and the role of sex hormones on metabolic health.

Dr Kiran Aftab
Focusing on the application of machine learning models on neuroimaging data for the early diagnosis and prognostication in dementia, with an emphasis on developing transparent algorithms and improving their acceptibility to clinicians.

Cécile Crapart, PhD in Clinical Neurosciences
Aiming to unravel the functional link between Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) morphology and the health of brain cells through an in-depth investigation of ER performance in calcium supplying powering neuronal and astroglia vital activities.

Sophie Field, PhD in Clinical Neurosciences
Looking at neuroinflammation in the brains of Huntington's disease patients and investigating whether somatic instability or transportable elements plays a part in this. 

Anna Vlachaki, PhD in Clinical Neurosciences
Researching programmed axon death, and the role of the pro-degenerative protein SARM1 in various neurodegenerative diseases, using biochemical and structural approaches.

Lea Satala, MPhil in Foundations of Clinical Psychology
Studying child and adolescent mental health, with a particular focus on bridging the researcher-practitioner gap and ensuring lived experience voices are included in research. My current research focuses on integrating mental and physical health in the Cambridge Children's Hospital.

Rini Banerjee
Developing mathematically rooted tools for improving the reliability of low-level software, with an emphasis on usability by real-world engineers. Current work: developing a tool for dynamically checking user-annotated separation logic specifications in C code.

Anna Ida Hudig
Research on the governance of data, AI, and connected devices. Projects include public sector AI procurement, data intermediaries for AI governance, and upholding data rights in the Internet of Things and women’s health applications.

Yaru Liu, PhD in Computer Science
Focusing on perceptual video quality assessment and simulation-based data generation for robotics. Developing machine learning-driven methods for optimizing perceptual visual quality and generating simulation data that enable scalable training and evaluation of robot manipulation policies.

Jasmine Jordan, PhD in Criminology
Analyzing the relationship between personal and proximal contact with incarceration and political participation, particularly among African Americans. 

María José Arosemena Burbano, MPhil in Criminological Research
Intimate partner violence.

Marina Messeri, PhD in Divinity
Working on the interconnectedness between man and the cosmos in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century benedictine abbess and mystic, focusing on how her insights can inform contemporary discussions on environmental ethics.

Elise Morrison, PhD in Divinity
Working on the metaphysics of gift in Dante's Commedia.

Xuyi Yang, PhD in Economics
Applied microeconomics, labour economics, and productivity and innovation.

Linh Nguyen, PhD in Education
Love as epistemology through feminist pedagogies and decolonial storytelling and spillage.

Mariel Alem-Fonseca, PhD in Engineering
Her research in the Industrial Resilience Research Group at the Institute for Manufacturing focuses on the evaluation of alternative protein supply chains from a resilience and cost perspective.

Lihani du Plessis, PhD in Engineering
Undertaking research in the Engineering Design Centre, focusing on (re)designing the NHS medical supply chains to be free from labour exploitation.

Chisom Ifeobu, PhD in Engineering
Onshore Wind Turbine Foundations for Sustainable Development in Africa.

Constanze Leeb, PhD in Engineering
Undertaking research in the Centre for Technology Management at the Institute for Manufacturing, focusing on the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on individuals and their feeling of agency and feeling of control, when using AI to augment their work.

Ayse Okcu, PhD in Electrical Engineering
Conducting research under two main themes: the first is to understand the emergence of memory from an information theoretic perspective; the second is solving inverse problems to locate the unknown molecule emitting sources.

Juliette Bretan, PhD in English
Representations of Polish characters in Anglophone modernism, as well as cross-cultural collaboration between Britain and Poland in the first half of the 20th century.

Jess Dunmore, PhD in English
Exploring the creative and critical potential of the four elements - air, earth, water, and fire - in early modern natural philosophy, focusing in particular on seventeenth-century writing.

Alla Gubara, MPhil in Digital Humanities
My research examines how Sudan's 2003 conflict unfolds across digital platforms where power, visibility, and truth are contested in real time. It explores how Sudanese users -- especially youth and the diaspora -- transform social media into spaces of testimony, mourning, and resistance, revealing how digital traces become collective memory and shape what is remembered and forgotten.

Maya Haidar, PhD in English
Bringing a literary-critical lens to cultural productions of British, Indian and French women in colonial India to show how constructions of gender were reconfigured by different autobiographical genres.

Olivia Houseman, PhD in English
The shifting relationship between literature and the visual arts in women's writing of the Romantic century.

Jessica Moore, PhD in Film and Screen Studies
Evaluating the concept of ‘looseness’ in relation to narration and aesthetics in the fiction film.

Cat Watts, PhD in French
The ontology of the manuscript, translation imperii and American myth, Arthurian literature, countercultures in hagiographic transmission, resistance narratives, and trans-temporal and medium-agnostic legacy.

Isobel Akerman, PhD in History
Exploring the emergence of environmental thought within regional botanic gardens in post-war Britain, and considering how this affected change in their scientific research, institutional strategies and public education programmes.

Deguang Li
Exploring the diverse reactions to the Great Comet of 1811 in Britain and France, which reflect a distinct re-enchantment of celestial phenomena at the close of the long eighteenth century, with a focus on popular science, scientific instruments, and the history of reading, collection and consumption.

Zhiyu Chen, PhD in History & Philosophy of Science
The cross-cultural production of cartography in the early modern South China Sea.

Janna Mueller, PhD in History & Philosophy of Science
Investigating the evolving conceptions and classifications of celestial bodies in early 19th-century astronomy, drawing on the works of astronomers who pursued a form of “physical astronomy,” exploratively observing celestial objects with high-resolution telescopes and drawing inferences about the nature and composition rather than their positions and motions.

Fu Ge Yang
Examining the overlap between psychiatry and spiritualism in early 20th-century China, focusing on fraudulent practices in the industry, the role of women and the international connection with Germany. Also interested in the intersection of medicine, colonial history, queer and gender studies.

Maria Victoria Cogorno, PhD in Latin American Studies
Discussions of the ideal national community across Argentina's process of nation-building (XIX-XX) in literature, history, politics and the press, with a focus on the use of animal imagery and metaphor to address political issues and criticise political enemies.

Laurisa Sastoque Pabon, PhD in Latin American Studies
Researching Colombian diasporic communities in urban centres such as New York, Miami and London, and their responses to hegemonic state and media narratives of criminal involvement and transnational drug trade participation. Also exploring the imaginaries, conflicts and negotiations that emerge out of diasporic narrative and spatial production.

Joana Ribeiro de Faria, PhD in Law 
Focusing on the legal and economic challenges of concluding contracts with the support of artificial intelligent agents. 

Aurora Lixinhao Gao, PhD in Applied Linguistics/Education
Multilingualism, psychological development, and social justice.

Élisabeth Demers-Potvin, PhD in Medical Science at the MRC Epidemiology Unit
Examining changes to marketing strategies used by the food industry following the UK advertising restrictions for less healthy foods on television and online.

Marlene Valek, PhD in Philosophy
Working in political and social philosophy of language with a focus on speech act theory. Researching the ways in which members of marginalised groups are silenced or excluded from conversations.

Skyla White, PhD in Physics
Investigating the kinetics of prebiotic reaction networks, with a goal of placing better constraints on the geochemical environment that may have been conducive to the first steps of life's emergence.

Leah Schmidt, PhD in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies
Thesis title: PANIC ATTACK: Anxious Futurity, Embodiment, and Disorder in Contemporary Biopolitical Security Politics
My PhD research is situated at the nexus of affect theory's exploration of embodied emotions, biopolitics' insights into socio-political governance, and political theory's analysis of individual agency. This investigation posits that 'anxiety' operates as a somatic-political force, shaping the racialized and gendered body within security governance and resistance in the 21st century.

Siao Chi Mok, PhD in Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics
Studying moduli spaces in algebraic geometry, particularly those constructed via combinatorial techniques, and their role in enumerative geometry.

Martina Scauda, PhD in Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics
My work bridges statistical thinking about causation with legal approaches to counterfactual analysis, aiming to facilitate discussions of causes and effects in courtrooms.

Sally Montgomery, PhD in Social Anthropology
Environmental anthropology, environmental-grief and plastic pollution, conservation.

Nina Krause, PhD in Biological Sciences
Translational approaches to infectious diseases, based around the development of a trivalent vaccine candidate against Marburg-, Ebola- and Lassa virus, evaluating vaccine candidates in different animal models in regards to immunogenicity and efficacy.

Ming Khan, PhD in Zoology
Studying the ecological interactions of Antarctic seafloor communities using seabed photographs of the modern oceans, and the palaeocology of Antarctic invertebrate communities of the latest Maastrichtian (66 million years ago) using fossil data from museum collections.

Helena (Sacchi) Shin-Clayton, PhD in Zoology
Studying restoration methods for riparian margins within established oil palm plantations in Indonesia, focusing on reintroducing ecological conservation areas to preserve tropical species and foster a sustainable agricultural landscape that balances both production and conservation goals.