Our people

The Most Revd Archbishop Eamon Martin, Primate of all Ireland is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund's College.

Professor Mason is an Emerita Professor in Solar Physics at DAMTP. She was a Tutor at St Eds for many years and then Senior Tutor from 2006-2011. She also served on many college and University committees. Her photo portrait hangs in the Garden Room with other Life Fellows.

Helen Mason’s field of research is solar physics. She is one of the world’s leading experts on the ultraviolet, UV, and X-ray spectrum of the Sun. She led the Atomic- Astrophysics Group at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) until her retirement in 2017. She has worked as a co-investigator and associated scientist on many joint UK, NASA, ESA, Japanese and Indian space projects including SoHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), Hinode and SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory). Solar space observations have completely changed our view of the Sun. She is a founder member of the CHIANTI team, an atomic database universally used for the analysis of solar spectroscopic observations, with over 4000 citations. Helen has been based at Cambridge University for over 40 years, having obtained a BSc (First Class Honours) in Physics and Astronomy and PhD at the University of London. She has taught at Cambridge University, London University and for the Open University. She has served as lecturer, examiner, Director of CATAM and on the Maths Faculty Board. She has also supervised many PhD students and post-docs who now have successful careers in the UK, Europe, India and the USA. She has organised and led many international conferences on solar physics. She has an extensive publication list (around 250 papers in refereed journals), with several (25) invited reviews and book chapters.

Helen has always been keen to convey her passion for solar physics to the public and school students. She has given many public lectures, including at the Cambridge Festival, Royal Institution and Institute of Physics. She has written articles for science magazines and participated in many radio and TV programmes, for example the BBC program ‘Seven Ages of Starlight’ and BBC Radio4 ‘In Our Time – Solar Wind’, reaching thousands of people. She was NASA’s solar representative at the Great American Eclipse, 2017, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with media coverage reaching thousands. She has engaged in a multitude of outreach activities throughout her career, in particular working with school children, locally and nationally. She has focussed on those schools most in need of science enrichment. She produced an educational web site for teachers and students called Sun|trek (www.suntrek.org) which has been used extensively in the UK, USA and worldwide. More recently, she has led the SunSpaceArt project (sunspaceart.org), a team of scientists and artists, funded by STFC. Her team have run workshops in many schools (for children aged 7-12 years old) and led family activities at science festivals, reaching around 15,000 children and 2,000 teachers. The feedback has been superb. Helen has also been keen to promote education in developing countries. She has visited South Africa to work on astronomy projects with teachers and students in the former townships. She has also worked extensively in India, with schools in Pune, Maharashtra, and the rural areas of Tamil Nadu.

Academic Profile

Publications

• Mondal, B, Mason, H.E. et al., Evolution of the Elemental Abundances during B-class solar flares: soft X-ray spectral measurements with Chandrayaan-2 XSM, 2021, ApJ, 920
• Mulay, S., Tripathi, D. & Mason, H.E., Thermodynamic evolution of a sigmoid active region and associated flares, 2021, MNRAS, 504,
• Mason, H.E. & Schell, H., We love STEAM, 2021, Astrononmy and Geophysics, 62,
• Del Zanna, G. & Mason, H.E., Solar UV and X-ray Spectral Diagnostics, 2018, Solar Physics Living Reviews, 15, 5
  Awards & Recognitions
• 2010- Helen was nominated as one of the six ‘Women of Outstanding Achievement’.
• 2010 - An international meeting was held in her honour at DAMTP, Solar Plasma Spectroscopy- Achievements and Future Challenges: Celebrating the Career of Dr Helen Mason.
• 2014 - Helen was awarded an OBE for her services to Higher Education and to Women in Science, Engineering and Technology.
• 2018 - Helen was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Annie Maunder Medal for Outreach.
• 2024 - Helen won an Ogden Trust award for Sustained Contribution to Physics Outreach.
• 2021 - the SunSpaceArt team, which Helen Mason leads, was awarded the Sir Arthur Clarke Group Award for Space Achievement in Education and Outreach.
• 2024 - the CHIANTI team, of which Helen Mason is a Founder Member won the NASA Group Achievement Award ‘for outstanding contributions to the scientific productivity of NASA missions and the creation of a uniquely valuable tool for spectroscopic scientists worldwide’.

Former President of Ireland

David is Director of Studies for Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic

I was elected to the Fellowship in 2013 as Dean, becoming Praelector in 2014, and elected to an Emeritus Fellowship in 2018 after retiring as Dean. Since 2019 I have also been a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), Lima, Peru. 

Fr Alban McCoy was educated at the Universities of Kent and Oxford. After ordination in 1975 as a priest in the Franciscan Order (OFM Conventual), he served as a curate in a far-flung rural parish in Lincolnshire, where he was also for three years a Chaplain in the Royal Air Force at RAF Digby, an intelligence gathering base. He was Dean of Studies at the Franciscan Study Centre, Canterbury (1982-91), where he also taught philosophy and, at the University of Kent, medieval theology. After Canterbury, he was Dean of Philosophy at Allen Hall, London, the Westminster Diocesan Seminary (1992-98). Moving to Cambridge, he became Catholic Chaplain to the University of Cambridge from 1998 to 2013. From 1995 to 2020, he was the Religious Books Editor at The Tablet, the London-based international Catholic weekly newspaper, where he is now Editorial Consultant and wine writer. He is the author of An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Catholicism (Continuum-Bloomsbury 2001), An Intelligent Persons Guide to Christian Ethics (Continuum-Bloomsbury 2006) and co-editor of The Diary of Thomas Rowcroft: British Consul in Peru 1824, (Asociación Cultural Peruano Británico 2023). His research interests are St Thomas Aquinas’s natural and moral theology, in particular, his virtue ethics. He also held the positions of Dean (2013-18), Acting Dean (2018-20), Second Bursar (2014-19), Wine Steward (2018-23).”

Lorraine Krall McCrary is Associate Professor of political science at Wabash College, a liberal arts school in Indiana, where she is also Department Chair. After serving as a visiting scholar at St Edmund’s, Lorraine has been appointed as a Research Associate to continue her work on disability and community at the VHI.

McCrary is a political theorist whose research focuses on communities of care that include people with disabilities. She is drafting a monograph provisionally entitled, Care for Citizens: A New Political Theory of Cognitive Disability and Community. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, which supported work on earlier phases of this project. She also writes about topics in politics and literature, as well as the relationship between the family and politics.

Lorraine earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University where she wrote about Alexis de Tocqueville’s and John Stuart Mill’s conceptions of women as members of families and as political actors. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Political Science Association, among other institutions. An advocate of community-engaged learning, Lorraine’s classes bring students outside the university to learn with people who have been excluded from colleges and universities, including people with cognitive disabilities and incarcerated people.

My research explores intersections between neuroscience, experience and community wellbeing. Using a community-centred model, I apply evidence-based pedagogy to community learning experiences that cultivate not just knowledge, but skills and dispositions broadly in support of community wellbeing.

Dr Nancy Michael earned her doctorate degree in neuroscience from the University of Minnesota in 2012. Her doctoral studies were anchored in the field of behavioural neuroendocrinology where she explored questions of experience dependent plasticity – how experiences with the individuals and the world around us change nervous system structure and function. This curiosity led her to pursue postdoctoral studies in an adolescent development lab, further developing her ability to interrogate the ways in which experiences moderate brain structure, function and behaviour. Harnessing this background in experience dependent plasticity, Michael chose to devote her skills to undergraduate educational formation. She joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2014 to develop the newly created undergraduate program in neuroscience and behaviour. Over the years, her dedication to excellence, innovation in education and commitment to community wellness have earned her numerous teaching, advising and community awards, and currently serves as the Director of Education and Co-Director for the Neuroscience and Behaviour major at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to her work on campus, Michael partnership with multiple community organizations to develop and implement NEAR science approaches that aim to mitigate the impact of toxic stress and promote healing and resilience of individuals and communities. NEAR stands for Neuroscience, Epigenetics, Adverse childhood experiences and Resilience, and a NEAR-science approach uses a community-centred, general capacity building model to mobilize the evidence base of the NEAR sciences in support of practical skill development for individuals and community organizations.

Broadly, Dr Michael’s work collaboratively develops population-specific, NEAR-based strategies to support practical skill building for community healing and resilience efforts. Her work is published across a wide variety of platforms ranging from primary scientific journals, book chapters, to children’s books. Common themes across her writing centre around experience dependent plasticity and the critical role relationships play in human learning and well-being. In addition to her written works, Dr Michael takes a leadership role in designing and executing a wide variety of professional development opportunities to support individuals in the “helping professions” (e.g. educators, youth workers, mental health professionals, community health workers, medical professionals, etc.). Dr Michael is known for making very complex information accessible and actionable in practical contexts. The breadth of her productivity is indicative of her desire to not only participate in knowledge generation, but to support the translation of the neuroscientific knowledge base into practical skills, behaviours and habits of mind that become present in our daily living.

Academic Profile 

Publications

• Michael N, Chan-Deveare V, [Eifler and Wheeler (Eds)], Learning to Serve: A Neuroscience-informed Scaffold to Developing Students as Community Leaders, 2025, Beneath the Rage and Tumult: Promoting Radical Hospitality and Belonging in College Classrooms.
• Michael N. A Part, Not Apart: courageous curiosity reminds us of shared our shared humanity, 2024, Notre Dame Magazine
• Brown K*, Nisbet A*, Hammond R*, [Michael NA (Ed)]. No Snow Day for the Brain, 2020, Lulu publishing.
• Hollender M*, Michael NA, Short-Term Brain-Based Growth Mindset Pilot Intervention Indicates Potential of Diversion Programs for Early Offenders in the Juvenile Justice System, 2023, Internat J of Soc Sci and Human Research

Dr Joseph Millard is a Bye-Fellow at St Edmund's College.

His research focuses on the application of large-scale statistical models to understand the causes and consequences of biodiversity change. His current role is as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge, focusing on the role of novel AI and economic mechanisms in solving biodiversity change.

Dr Millard is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. He has published across a number of areas of the biodiversity sciences and the application and ethics of AI in research. In particular, he led in developing the largest models of future global crop pollination risk resulting from human land-use and climate change, and led in developing the first real-time index of human interest in biodiversity. For such work Dr Millard was nominated twice by the Royal Society as an outstanding early career researcher. Specifically, he was selected to talk at the Royal Society at an event commemorating Prof Dame Georgina Mace, and to attend the 2025 Royal Society UK-China Early Career meeting in Beijing on biodiversity and the climate.

Dr Millard has provided scientific advice to the government at a high level, including contributing to a No. 10 SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) Cabinet Briefing on the reintroduction of COVID-19 restrictions, advising Sir Patrick Vallance on the biodiversity modelling work of the Natural History Museum, contributing towards a trade data guide for the Ecuadorian government, and writing 12 species trade reviews for the European Commission. Dr Millard has also been an expert reviewer for Conservation Letters, Ecosystem Services, Ecography, Scientific Reports, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Communications Earth & Environment, PLOS ONE, Conservation Biology, Nature Ecology and Evolution, and the UK research council BBSRC.

Prior to his current role, Dr Millard was a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, an honorary non-stipendiary research fellow of Nuffield College, an associate member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, and an employee of the Nature Publishing Group and UNEP-WCMC (UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre). He completed his PhD in Ecology jointly between University College London, the RSPB, and the Zoological Society of London, and a BSc (Zoology) and MSc (Biodiversity and Conservation) at the University of Leeds.

Academic Profile

My research interests lie in health law and ethics, particularly informed consent, doctor-patient relationship, and reproductive ethics widely considered.

Dr Milo is Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, University of Sheffield, where she leads the Health Law Research Group. Before joining Sheffield, she was College Assistant Professor and Fellow in Law at Robinson College-University of Cambridge, and previously Lecturer at the University of Exeter Law School. She holds a PhD in Health Law from Durham Law School; a MA in Bioethics and Medical Law (St Mary’s University-Twickenham); an integrated MA in Law (University of Siena, Italy); and a Diploma in Legal Studies (University of Oxford).

Academic Profile

I was elected a Life Fellow at St Edmund’s in 2014, following 40 years of continuous service as a financial officer of the College. My current area of academic research is the history and philosophy of science, the history of cosmology since 1915. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Simon Mitton read physics at the University of Oxford (Trinity College). Then he headed to Churchill College for doctorate in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Martin Ryle’s radio astronomy group. From 1972–1978 he was a staff member of the Institute of Astronomy, initially as a postdoc with Fred Hoyle, followed by appointment as the departmental administrator 1974–1978. Cambridge University Press then engaged him initially as senior editor with responsibility for commissioning in the physical sciences. In 1984 he was appointed to the executive board of directors at the Press, with global responsibility for its academic book publishing programmes in the sciences. His major achievements in that context included winning the publishing contract for a succession of Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Geneva; overseeing a major expansion of the publishing programme in earth and planetary science; and persuading his friend and colleague Stephen Hawking to remove two dozen equations from the typescript of his popular bestseller, A Brief History of Science.
Following retirement from the Press in 2001, Simon started a third career based at St Edmund’s College for his research programme on the history of astronomy and cosmology in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on biographical presentations of the lives in science of major pioneers. He has published dozens of peer reviewed papers, reviews, books and monographs on the key pioneers: Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, George Gamow, and Georges Lemaître; The latter resided at St Edmund’s House (1923–1924) while working alongside Sir Arthur Eddington on Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Simon Mitton’s current project is a full biography of Lemaître, who is now noted as one the founders of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Throughout fifty years of academic fellowship at St Edmund’s, Simon Mitton has worked tirelessly as a vigorous outreach promoter of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. He has worked in several media: as consultant and columnist for New Scientist (1970s); running educational courses for the public at Madingley Hall and evening classes sponsored by the University throughout the east of England (1970s, 1980s); as an astronomy lecturer on cruise liners, jointly with Dr Jacqueline Mitton, (2006-2017); giving presentations to university astronomical societies; script writer (with Jacqueline Mitton) for a 26-part tv series Destination Space; Editor-in-Chief for The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy (1977, Jonathan Cape London; ten foreign language co-editions); and co-author Young Oxford Book of Astronomy (1995). Simon is a strong supporter of the Catholic Chapel at St Edmund’s College, and its vibrant community of students, staff, academic visitors and members of the public. He enjoys popping into the College for congenial conversations with students and senior members alike on astronomy, the history of astronomy and the universe.

Personal Website

Publications

• O'Raifeartaigh, C; O'Keeffe, M; (...); Mitton, Simon, One hundred years of the cosmological constant: from "superfluous stunt" to dark energy, 2018, Physics in Perspective 20 (4) , Pp.318-341.
• Simon Mitton, Georges Lemaître and the Foundations of Big Bang Cosmology, 2020, The Antiquarian Astronomer 14 2–19
• Simon Mitton, A Short History of Panspermia from Antiquity Through the Mid-1970s, 2022, Astrobioiogy 22 1379–1391
• Simon Mitton, From Crust to Core, A Chronicle of Deep Carbon Science, 2021, Cambridge University Press
• Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton, Vera Rubin a Life, 2021, Harvard University Press

Awards & Recognitions 

• 1980. The International Astronomical Union designated minor planet 4027 as "Minor Planet Mitton" in recognition of Simon and Jacqueline Mitton's contributions to popularizing astronomy through their book writing and lecturing.

Sean P Moriarty joined Cambridge in America in January 2024 as Senior Director of Development. Sean provides strategic leadership to the CAm fundraising team as we work with donors in the US and Canada to secure major, principal, and legacy gifts in support of Collegiate Cambridge. He has spent most of his career in higher education philanthropy and has been fortunate to work at prestigious organizations in the US and the UK, including: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Brooklyn Law School, and The New School. Earlier in his career, Sean served in the development office at The London School of Economics. Sean holds a BS in Journalism from Boston University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

My research holistically looks at modular and interoperable information architectures in complex networked systems, especially in industrial ecosystems.

Anand is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge, a Senior Member of IEEE, and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. His research focuses on modular and interoperable information architectures in complex networked systems. With over 13 years of R&D experience in IoT and automation, his expertise includes digital twins, IoT architectures, UAV networks, eHealth, and digital transformation. He serves as Vice Chair of IEEE P1954 Standards Committee, Area Expert in IEEE ComSoc SIG on IoT for e-Health, Editor for IET Digital Twins and Applications, and Associate Editor for Springer Nature PPNA. His accolades include the IEEE e-Health TC Best Paper Award (2022), Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award (2018), and top-cited papers in IEEE Transactions. He is the author of two textbooks and over 70 scientific publications. Frequently delivering keynotes globally, he was listed among Elsevier's Top 2% Scientists in 2024.

Academic Profile

Dr Catherine Nancekievill is a theologian whose research spans systematic and practical theology. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where her thesis offered a new interpretation of Karl Rahner’s theology of self-realisation through the concept of the symbolic self. Her current research focuses on the theology of Erich Przywara and John Henry Newman, examining judgement, reasoning and assent, alongside practical theological research into institutional culture, ecclesial practice and contemporary challenges, including racism and church-based abuse. Before returning to academia, Dr Nancekievill held a senior national leadership role within the Church of England, where she worked in theological education, vocation and organisational development. She also has a background in physics and engineering, having studied physics at University College London and worked at Arm. Her interdisciplinary experience informs her interest in how theology can illuminate responsible judgement, institutional life and human flourishing.

Dr. Marc Neugröschel is a Research Fellow in the ISGAP-Woolf Institute Fellowship Training Programme in Critical Contemporary Antisemitism Studies, Discrimination, and Human Rights. A sociologist, he earned his PhD and MA from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Prior to this, he studied at RWTH University in Aachen, Germany, his birthplace and hometown. Additionally, he has worked as a journalist for German and Israeli English-language newspapers.