Research Fellows
Dr Virgil Andrei
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Chemistry
My interests revolve around the development of renewable energy sources, such as photoelectrocatalysis, photovoltaics and thermoelectrics . Currently, I am working on scalable "artificial leaf" devices, which can split water to produce hydrogen, or reduce carbon dioxide to value-added products under solar light illumination. This interdisciplinary approach is fundamental for the wide-scale implementation of sustainable solar fuels.
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Natural Sciences (Physical)
Chemistry
My interests revolve around the development of renewable energy sources, such as photoelectrocatalysis, photovoltaics and thermoelectrics . Currently, I am working on scalable "artificial leaf" devices, which can split water to produce hydrogen, or reduce carbon dioxide to value-added products under solar light illumination. This interdisciplinary approach is fundamental for the wide-scale implementation of sustainable solar fuels.
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Dr Rakesh Arul
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Physics and Astrophysics
Photonics is the science of how light works and how light can do work. In his research Dr Arul creates the optical sensors of tomorrow by trapping and concentrating light to atomic scales with nanoparticles that are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.
During his PhD he designed new optical sensors to detect infrared light. The colours of molecules in the infrared, invisible to the naked eye, contain rich information about their chemical structure and identity. Being able to ‘see’ this invisible IR world has enabled disease diagnosis, art conservation, greenhouse gas monitoring and the stunning images of exoplanets. Despite such promise, IR detection remains far from democratised due to the costs and limited practical utility of existing technologies. During his PhD Dr Arul invented a new technology for IR detection by trapping IR light to the nanoscale and converting it into detectable visible light.
As a Research Fellow, Dr Arul hopes to combine physics with chemistry, and use light to control chemical reactions. By forming a new state of matter that is part light and part molecule, he aims to use light as a radical new tool to control chemical transformations that create sustainable fuels, such as hydrogen. He will also investigate and create new kinds of matter displaying exotic quantum behaviour that is impossible without extremely strong interaction between light and molecules.
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Natural Sciences (Physical)
Physics and Astrophysics
Photonics is the science of how light works and how light can do work. In his research Dr Arul creates the optical sensors of tomorrow by trapping and concentrating light to atomic scales with nanoparticles that are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.
During his PhD he designed new optical sensors to detect infrared light. The colours of molecules in the infrared, invisible to the naked eye, contain rich information about their chemical structure and identity. Being able to ‘see’ this invisible IR world has enabled disease diagnosis, art conservation, greenhouse gas monitoring and the stunning images of exoplanets. Despite such promise, IR detection remains far from democratised due to the costs and limited practical utility of existing technologies. During his PhD Dr Arul invented a new technology for IR detection by trapping IR light to the nanoscale and converting it into detectable visible light.
As a Research Fellow, Dr Arul hopes to combine physics with chemistry, and use light to control chemical reactions. By forming a new state of matter that is part light and part molecule, he aims to use light as a radical new tool to control chemical transformations that create sustainable fuels, such as hydrogen. He will also investigate and create new kinds of matter displaying exotic quantum behaviour that is impossible without extremely strong interaction between light and molecules.
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Dr John Colley
English
Dr Colley works on classical reception and translation across late medieval and Renaissance English literature, with an emphasis on the print and manuscript contexts of literary production. His research contends that translation and classical reception studies offer especially insightful lenses for interrogating broader issues of intellectual history.
In his doctoral thesis on Tudor humanism and the translation of Greek, he took a new, more generically diverse approach to reception scholarship. In particular, he argued that the classical tradition in early Tudor England was as much a matter of Homer’s reception as of the reception of authors such as St John Chrysostom and Eusebius: the thesis painted a history of classical reception that was never straightforwardly classical.
At St John’s, he is developing his classical reception work with a new monograph project, ‘Comedy and the Classical Tradition: Drama in England from Frulovisi to Shakespeare’. Reading extensively between vernacular and neo-Latin texts, this project will revise the history of comedy’s evolution in England across an ambitiously broad period, from the 1430s to the 1620s. What were the distinctive features of an emergent English dramatic tradition forged in the wake of classical drama?
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English
Dr Colley works on classical reception and translation across late medieval and Renaissance English literature, with an emphasis on the print and manuscript contexts of literary production. His research contends that translation and classical reception studies offer especially insightful lenses for interrogating broader issues of intellectual history.
In his doctoral thesis on Tudor humanism and the translation of Greek, he took a new, more generically diverse approach to reception scholarship. In particular, he argued that the classical tradition in early Tudor England was as much a matter of Homer’s reception as of the reception of authors such as St John Chrysostom and Eusebius: the thesis painted a history of classical reception that was never straightforwardly classical.
At St John’s, he is developing his classical reception work with a new monograph project, ‘Comedy and the Classical Tradition: Drama in England from Frulovisi to Shakespeare’. Reading extensively between vernacular and neo-Latin texts, this project will revise the history of comedy’s evolution in England across an ambitiously broad period, from the 1430s to the 1620s. What were the distinctive features of an emergent English dramatic tradition forged in the wake of classical drama?
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Dr Leah Downey
Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS)
Political theory is the study of how people ought to live together. Political economy considers how people produce what they need to live. These endeavours are, and always have been, fundamentally and inextricably linked. It is in the shadow of this observation that Dr Downey's research employs the tools of political theory to better understand the relationship between macroeconomic policy and democracy.
Her doctoral thesis explored what it would look like to democratise monetary policy. Recognising that the creation and allocation of money are among the state’s most distinctive powers, she argued that instituting an approach to monetary policymaking that respects the integrity of domestic democracy would have radical implications for both domestic and global economic governance.
As a Fellow at St John’s, Dr Downey will extend her research into the relationship between macroeconomic policy and democracy to explore how different notions of time employed by policymakers in modern democracies shape the power and possibilities of macroeconomic policymaking. This is an urgent task for two reasons: first, because it is essential to unlocking the state’s macroeconomic policymaking powers in the face of an existential climate crisis, and secondly, because doing so is critical for achieving the full realisation of a flourishing democratic state.
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Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS)
Political theory is the study of how people ought to live together. Political economy considers how people produce what they need to live. These endeavours are, and always have been, fundamentally and inextricably linked. It is in the shadow of this observation that Dr Downey's research employs the tools of political theory to better understand the relationship between macroeconomic policy and democracy.
Her doctoral thesis explored what it would look like to democratise monetary policy. Recognising that the creation and allocation of money are among the state’s most distinctive powers, she argued that instituting an approach to monetary policymaking that respects the integrity of domestic democracy would have radical implications for both domestic and global economic governance.
As a Fellow at St John’s, Dr Downey will extend her research into the relationship between macroeconomic policy and democracy to explore how different notions of time employed by policymakers in modern democracies shape the power and possibilities of macroeconomic policymaking. This is an urgent task for two reasons: first, because it is essential to unlocking the state’s macroeconomic policymaking powers in the face of an existential climate crisis, and secondly, because doing so is critical for achieving the full realisation of a flourishing democratic state.
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Dr Brigid Ehrmantraut
Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC)
The languages and literatures of medieval Britain and Ireland.
Ms Ehrmantraut is a philologist and intellectual historian specialising in the languages and literatures of medieval Britain and Ireland. My interests include Celtic studies, Latin literature, Classical reception and textual transmission, translation and landscape studies.
Her PhD thesis explored the reception of Classical mythology in medieval Ireland between the 10th and 12th centuries, and the ways in which Greek and Roman narratives became situated within a medieval Christian worldview. She examined a corpus of vernacular Irish adaptations of Classical Latin epic, as well as the influence of Classical mythology on medieval Irish authors’ conceptions of their own pre-Christian past. Ms Ehrmantraut has also worked on medieval perceptions of prehistoric monuments in Irish, Welsh and Latin literature.
During her Fellowship, Ms Ehrmantraut will continue her study of medieval Irish Classical reception into the 13th and 14th centuries, examining the development of the cath ‘battle’ genre of tales. These compositions drew heavily on Classical literature as well as on the earlier vernacular Irish adaptations of Classical epic produced during the 10th through 12th centuries, which she investigated in her PhD thesis.
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Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC)
The languages and literatures of medieval Britain and Ireland.
Ms Ehrmantraut is a philologist and intellectual historian specialising in the languages and literatures of medieval Britain and Ireland. My interests include Celtic studies, Latin literature, Classical reception and textual transmission, translation and landscape studies.
Her PhD thesis explored the reception of Classical mythology in medieval Ireland between the 10th and 12th centuries, and the ways in which Greek and Roman narratives became situated within a medieval Christian worldview. She examined a corpus of vernacular Irish adaptations of Classical Latin epic, as well as the influence of Classical mythology on medieval Irish authors’ conceptions of their own pre-Christian past. Ms Ehrmantraut has also worked on medieval perceptions of prehistoric monuments in Irish, Welsh and Latin literature.
During her Fellowship, Ms Ehrmantraut will continue her study of medieval Irish Classical reception into the 13th and 14th centuries, examining the development of the cath ‘battle’ genre of tales. These compositions drew heavily on Classical literature as well as on the earlier vernacular Irish adaptations of Classical epic produced during the 10th through 12th centuries, which she investigated in her PhD thesis.
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Dr Helena Gellersen
Research Fellow
Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS)
(BSc Jacobs University Bremen, MRes Maastricht University, PhD Cambridge) for Experimental Psychology
I am a cognitive neuroscientist studying how healthy ageing and the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease alter brain function and memory processes.
Memories vary widely in terms of the amount of detail we recall, yet most prior studies used simple binary (correct vs. incorrect) measures. During my PhD at the University of Cambridge, I designed new tests to assess the fidelity with which people recall information uncovering cognitive processes that explain inter-individual differences in memory precision during ageing.
During my Fellowship at St John’s, I will use functional MRI to identify the neural underpinnings of memory fidelity in healthy ageing and determine features of brain dynamics that can explain youth-like performance even into old age. In collaboration with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, I will test whether memory fidelity tasks are promising for early detection of the preclinical phase of Alzheimer’s disease where individuals do not yet show obvious cognitive decline but harbour silent brain pathology. Using novel high-resolution neuroimaging methods, I will obtain a precise characterisation of the effects of preclinical pathology on memory systems at an unprecedented resolution. These insights are crucial to improve current memory tests for screening of at-risk older adults and monitoring potential treatment effects
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Research Fellow
Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS)
(BSc Jacobs University Bremen, MRes Maastricht University, PhD Cambridge) for Experimental Psychology
I am a cognitive neuroscientist studying how healthy ageing and the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease alter brain function and memory processes.
Memories vary widely in terms of the amount of detail we recall, yet most prior studies used simple binary (correct vs. incorrect) measures. During my PhD at the University of Cambridge, I designed new tests to assess the fidelity with which people recall information uncovering cognitive processes that explain inter-individual differences in memory precision during ageing.
During my Fellowship at St John’s, I will use functional MRI to identify the neural underpinnings of memory fidelity in healthy ageing and determine features of brain dynamics that can explain youth-like performance even into old age. In collaboration with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, I will test whether memory fidelity tasks are promising for early detection of the preclinical phase of Alzheimer’s disease where individuals do not yet show obvious cognitive decline but harbour silent brain pathology. Using novel high-resolution neuroimaging methods, I will obtain a precise characterisation of the effects of preclinical pathology on memory systems at an unprecedented resolution. These insights are crucial to improve current memory tests for screening of at-risk older adults and monitoring potential treatment effects
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Eve Houghton
Research Fellow
English
(BA, Yale, MPhil, Cambridge, PhD, Yale) for English
I am a scholar of early modern English literature. My current research, on free indirect style before the novel, is about the representation of speech and thought in the early days of English prose fiction.
My PhD thesis traced the early modern theatrical history of awkwardness, defined as the charismatic redirection, or misdirection, of audience attention. Each chapter centered on one of the early modern stage’s awkward types – the gull, the malcontent, the fop and the booby – in works by playwrights from William Shakespeare to Aphra Behn. I showed how these minor characters, often hopelessly inept in the traditional spheres of masculine self-assertion, were nonetheless capable of disrupting the hierarchy between leading men and supporting players.
At St John’s I am writing a book about early methods for representing speech and thought in sixteenth-century English fiction. Lacking novelistic methods (e.g. quotation marks), writers like George Gascoigne, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe experimented with a range of techniques for channeling the thoughts and voices of their characters. Their efforts were not always successful or consistent. The result, I argue, is a mobile and wandering point of view – a proto form of free indirect style.
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Research Fellow
English
(BA, Yale, MPhil, Cambridge, PhD, Yale) for English
I am a scholar of early modern English literature. My current research, on free indirect style before the novel, is about the representation of speech and thought in the early days of English prose fiction.
My PhD thesis traced the early modern theatrical history of awkwardness, defined as the charismatic redirection, or misdirection, of audience attention. Each chapter centered on one of the early modern stage’s awkward types – the gull, the malcontent, the fop and the booby – in works by playwrights from William Shakespeare to Aphra Behn. I showed how these minor characters, often hopelessly inept in the traditional spheres of masculine self-assertion, were nonetheless capable of disrupting the hierarchy between leading men and supporting players.
At St John’s I am writing a book about early methods for representing speech and thought in sixteenth-century English fiction. Lacking novelistic methods (e.g. quotation marks), writers like George Gascoigne, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe experimented with a range of techniques for channeling the thoughts and voices of their characters. Their efforts were not always successful or consistent. The result, I argue, is a mobile and wandering point of view – a proto form of free indirect style.
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Dr Jef Laga
Mathematics
Number theory
Mr Laga is a pure mathematician working in number theory, a field that goes back to the ancient Greeks and Babylonians and aims to understand properties of the whole numbers, the basic building blocks of mathematics. More specifically, he works in arithmetic statistics, which studies number-theoretic objects (like prime numbers or polynomial equations) in families.
He completed an undergraduate degree at Ghent University (with an exchange semester in Paris) and a Master's degree (Part III) at Cambridge. In his PhD thesis at Cambridge, he showed how Lie theory (which is also used in theoretical physics) can be fruitfully applied to study the arithmetic statistics of Diophantine equations.
While at St John’s Mr Laga will continue investigating number theory through the lens of Lie theory, as well as exploring interactions with neighbouring fields such as algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry and singularity theory.
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Mathematics
Number theory
Mr Laga is a pure mathematician working in number theory, a field that goes back to the ancient Greeks and Babylonians and aims to understand properties of the whole numbers, the basic building blocks of mathematics. More specifically, he works in arithmetic statistics, which studies number-theoretic objects (like prime numbers or polynomial equations) in families.
He completed an undergraduate degree at Ghent University (with an exchange semester in Paris) and a Master's degree (Part III) at Cambridge. In his PhD thesis at Cambridge, he showed how Lie theory (which is also used in theoretical physics) can be fruitfully applied to study the arithmetic statistics of Diophantine equations.
While at St John’s Mr Laga will continue investigating number theory through the lens of Lie theory, as well as exploring interactions with neighbouring fields such as algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry and singularity theory.
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Dr Ella M Sbaraini
History
18th and 19th century British history
Ella Sbaraini is a historian with a particular interest in histories of mental health, death, the emotions, race and sexuality. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of Britain from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, and it seeks to examine the construction, and experience, of mental ill-health during this period.
Her PhD explored the experience of feeling suicidal in England and Wales between 1700 and 1850. It considered what it was like to feel suicidal at a time when suicide was illegal, the emotions that people expressed, and how these changed over time. It challenged the idea that suicide was ‘secularised’ over this period, instead proposing that suicide had profound religious significance for those who considered it.
During her Fellowship, Dr Sbaraini is working on a new project investigating the treatment and experiences of international patients in British 'lunatic' asylums between 1800 and 1920. Using a wider variety of legal, institutional and personal sources, it will - among other things - examine how patients born outside of Britain were perceived and treated by asylum staff, investigating issues of linguistic and religious provision, and the impact of migration on mental health'.
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History
18th and 19th century British history
Ella Sbaraini is a historian with a particular interest in histories of mental health, death, the emotions, race and sexuality. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of Britain from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, and it seeks to examine the construction, and experience, of mental ill-health during this period.
Her PhD explored the experience of feeling suicidal in England and Wales between 1700 and 1850. It considered what it was like to feel suicidal at a time when suicide was illegal, the emotions that people expressed, and how these changed over time. It challenged the idea that suicide was ‘secularised’ over this period, instead proposing that suicide had profound religious significance for those who considered it.
During her Fellowship, Dr Sbaraini is working on a new project investigating the treatment and experiences of international patients in British 'lunatic' asylums between 1800 and 1920. Using a wider variety of legal, institutional and personal sources, it will - among other things - examine how patients born outside of Britain were perceived and treated by asylum staff, investigating issues of linguistic and religious provision, and the impact of migration on mental health'.
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Dr Rebecca Shercliff
Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC)
My research centres on medieval texts and their development in the context of their social, historical and literary background, with a particular focus on producing new editions and translations of previously neglected works. My main research interests are medieval Irish literature and early Arthurian literature.
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Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC)
My research centres on medieval texts and their development in the context of their social, historical and literary background, with a particular focus on producing new editions and translations of previously neglected works. My main research interests are medieval Irish literature and early Arthurian literature.
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Dr Holly Smith
Research Fellow
History
(BA, MPhil Cambridge, PhD University College London) for History
Dr Smith is an historian of modern Britain. Her work lies at the intersection of architectural and political history. She is crucially preoccupied by how people translate their feelings about the built environment into language.
Her doctoral thesis offered a new history of high-rise housing and its grassroots reception in Britain. It revised influential arguments that high-rise architecture has been universally unpopular among its inhabitants. She excavated a diverse range of historical residential responses to different multi-storey environments to suggest a more nuanced relationship between architectural form and subjectivity.
At St John’s, she is turning to a new project on the post-war community architecture movement. Responding to the perceived repression of democracy in 'modernist' post-war urban design, this movement called for more participatory architectural practice. Her project traces the curious migration of the movement’s arguments – from their emergence in leftist counter-culture during the 1960s–70s to their redeployment by figures on the right by the 1980s. This research proposes that the ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’ (conventionally characterised as profoundly polarised camps) drew upon a shared political language in post-war Britain.
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Research Fellow
History
(BA, MPhil Cambridge, PhD University College London) for History
Dr Smith is an historian of modern Britain. Her work lies at the intersection of architectural and political history. She is crucially preoccupied by how people translate their feelings about the built environment into language.
Her doctoral thesis offered a new history of high-rise housing and its grassroots reception in Britain. It revised influential arguments that high-rise architecture has been universally unpopular among its inhabitants. She excavated a diverse range of historical residential responses to different multi-storey environments to suggest a more nuanced relationship between architectural form and subjectivity.
At St John’s, she is turning to a new project on the post-war community architecture movement. Responding to the perceived repression of democracy in 'modernist' post-war urban design, this movement called for more participatory architectural practice. Her project traces the curious migration of the movement’s arguments – from their emergence in leftist counter-culture during the 1960s–70s to their redeployment by figures on the right by the 1980s. This research proposes that the ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’ (conventionally characterised as profoundly polarised camps) drew upon a shared political language in post-war Britain.
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Dr Yan Wang
Research Fellow
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Material Science
(BA Jiangnan University, MSc Peking University, PhD Cambridge) for Material Science
Modern electronics consume an enormous amount of energy. My research is dedicated to leveraging the fundamental advantage of atomically thin semiconductors to create ultra-low power electronic devices. This involves the development of high-quality electronic materials, designing innovative device structures and engineering the properties of these devices to improve their efficiency and performance.
During my PhD, I successfully demonstrated clean contacts on atomically thin semiconductors using an industry compatible approach for the first time and realized low contact resistance for N-type field effect transistors (FETs). This method has been widely adopted by the community. Further, I developed a method that mitigates energy transfer during deposition to enable clean van der Waals contacts using high work function metals, paving the way for practical P-type FETs.
As a Research Fellow at St John’s, I will develop ultra-low power electronics such as tunnel field-effect transistors, ferroelectric field-effect transistors, and tunnel electro-magneto-resistance memories based on atomically thin semiconductors enabled by my discoveries of van der Waals interfaces.
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Research Fellow
Natural Sciences (Physical)
Material Science
(BA Jiangnan University, MSc Peking University, PhD Cambridge) for Material Science
Modern electronics consume an enormous amount of energy. My research is dedicated to leveraging the fundamental advantage of atomically thin semiconductors to create ultra-low power electronic devices. This involves the development of high-quality electronic materials, designing innovative device structures and engineering the properties of these devices to improve their efficiency and performance.
During my PhD, I successfully demonstrated clean contacts on atomically thin semiconductors using an industry compatible approach for the first time and realized low contact resistance for N-type field effect transistors (FETs). This method has been widely adopted by the community. Further, I developed a method that mitigates energy transfer during deposition to enable clean van der Waals contacts using high work function metals, paving the way for practical P-type FETs.
As a Research Fellow at St John’s, I will develop ultra-low power electronics such as tunnel field-effect transistors, ferroelectric field-effect transistors, and tunnel electro-magneto-resistance memories based on atomically thin semiconductors enabled by my discoveries of van der Waals interfaces.
Full profile