Our people

My research focuses on contemporary political philosophy in the analytic tradition. I have also worked on moral philosophy, the philosophy of education and medieval political theory.

Paul Weithman is the Glynn Family Honors Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, the university from which he received his B.A. in 1981. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, where he wrote his dissertation under John Rawls and Judith Shklar. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1991. Professor Weithman chaired the Philosophy Department between 2001 and 2007 and currently directs the interdisciplinary minor in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He serves on the editorial boards of the JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, THE REVIEW OF POLITICS and POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMICS. He is a member of the international advisory board of PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC ISSUES and is an honorary member of the Brazilian Society for Legal Philosophy. Professor Weithman has won several awards for his teaching. His book RELIGION AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP (Cambridge, 2002), won the annual book award from the North American Society for Social Philosophy. His WHY POLITICAL LIBERALISM (Oxford, 2010) won the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for the best book on liberal democratic theory published in its year. In 2015, Cambridge University Press published a collection of his papers under the title RAWLS, POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND REASONABLE FAITH.

Academic Profile

Awards & Recognitions 

• National Humanities Center Residential Fellowship, 2000
• Annual Book Award from the North American Society for Social Philosophy, 2003
• David and Elaine K. Spitz Prize for the best work of liberal and democratic theory published in 2010
• NEH Grant to host a conference, "A Theory of Justice at Fifty", 2021

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker is Associate Professor of History at Australian Catholic University.

She is an intellectual historian of early modern Britain with a particular interest in the intersections of theology, natural philosophy, and historical writing. She was awarded her BA with First Class Honours and the University Medal from the University of Sydney, and her PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar at King’s College. She then held a Junior Research Fellowship in History at Wolfson College, Oxford University. Her first book, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire (London: 2008) won the Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation Award for Non-fiction. Her most recent book is Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age (Zondervan/HarperCollins, 2024), which was awarded The Gospel Coalition’s 2024 Book of the Year (Culture Category) and shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year.

Former Vice-Chancellor of University of Cambridge, Lord Broers worked in the research and development laboratories of IBM in the United States for 19 years before returning to Cambridge in 1984 to become Professor of Electrical Engineering (1984–96) and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1985–90). He is a pioneer of nanotechnology.

Dr Phung Dao is Associate Professor in Second Language Education. His research focuses on the intersection of second language acquisition (SLA), educational technology, and language education.

Phung Dao is Associate Professor in Second Language Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, where he teaches MPhil/MEd courses in Research in Second Language Education (RSLE) and supervises PhD students. Before joining the University of Cambridge, Phung was a senior Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University (2018-2022), teaching undergraduate/postgraduate courses and supervising PhD students in TESOL/Applied Linguistics. He also taught undergraduate/postgraduate courses in Applied Linguistics at University of Queensland (Australia), Concordia University (Canada) and An Giang University (Vietnam). His research interests focus on instructed second language acquisition (ISLA), technology for language teaching and learning, peer interaction, learner engagement, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), L2 pedagogy, and L2 teacher education. His publications appear in international peer-reviewed Applied Linguistic journals such as Modern Language Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Teaching, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Language Teaching Research, Applied Linguistics Review, TESOL Journal, System, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, Language Learning Journal, IRAL and among others.

His current research projects, funded by British Council and IELTS IDP Australia, investigate online English language teaching in Vietnamese public schools, IELTS impacts on stakeholders, and young learners’ engagement in L2 learning tasks in face-to-face and online classes.

Academic Profile 

Publications

• Dao, P. (2024). Learner Engagement in Online Second Language Classrooms. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Iwashita, N., Dao, P., & Nguyen, M. (2025). Understanding Interaction in the Second Language Classroom Context. Multilingual Matters.
• Dao, P., M. Nguyen, PT. Duong, V. Tran-Thanh. (2021) Learners’ Engagement in L2 Computer-Mediated Interaction: Chat Mode, Interlocutor Familiarity, and Text Quality. Modern Language Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12737
• Dao, P., Bui, T. & Nguyen, XNCM (2024). Public primary school teachers’ perceptions and assessment of young learners’ engagement. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688241253546

Gianmarco Contino is an Associate Professor of Cancer Genomic Medicine and Group Leader in the Department of Cancer and Genetic Sciences at the University of Birmingham Medical School. He also serves as an Upper GI Consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, part of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, and as the Translational Lead for Precision Health Technologies at the University of Birmingham. Additionally, he is the Director of the MSc in Clinical Oncology at the University of Birmingham and the Network Chair of the EORTC Pathobiology Group. Gianmarco is a Research Fellow at the Von Hügel Institute, University of Cambridge, where he explores topics in the epistemology of medicine and the implications of artificial intelligence.

Previously, Gianmarco was a Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s Hospital. His training in surgical oncology and translational science included positions at the European Institute of Oncology (Milan), Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Imperial College London. He consulted for AI-driven biotech companies, including Cambridge Cancer Genomics (now part of Nvidia) and EpistemicAI.

Gianmarco's research focuses on functional genomics of aneuploidy and upper gastrointestinal cancers. As part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, he worked on identifying structural variations driving oesophageal adenocarcinoma. His current research leverages functional genomics approaches to understand the molecular mechanisms behind chromosomal instability in oesophageal adenocarcinoma, with active studies involving Genomics England and UK Biobank.

Clinically, Gianmarco specializes in advanced endoscopy and endoscopic treatment for upper gastrointestinal cancers. He has published extensively on the genomics and molecular therapeutics of pancreatic and oesophageal adenocarcinoma, with contributions appearing in leading journals such as Science and Nature.

Gianmarco is passionate about training the next generation of clinician-scientists and volunteers with organisations that support students from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter STEM fields.

I research how the moral values of love and justice can reshape institutions to foster mutual care. I’m currently working with hospitals in Chile on a scorecard that fosters spaces of encounter and enables caregivers—like mothers and health professionals—in giving and receiving loving care.

Thana C. de Campos-Rudinski is an Associate Professor at the School of Government and the Institute of Applied Ethics at the Pontifical Catholic University in Chile. She has a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.

Her research and teaching examine how laws and public policies impact the way we think and live the most fundamental aspects of life: love, family, friendship, the interdependence among people and countries. Her work has analysed the problems of global poverty, medical suffering, communicable diseases and pandemics, the loneliness epidemic, and grief. Her discussions draw on relational theories of justice (Aquinas and Finnis in particular), virtue ethics, and feminist ethics of care.

In The Global Health Crisis: Ethical Responsibilities (CUP, 2017) she discusses the duties of justice that we have (or do not have), as both individuals and nations, to aid those vulnerable people in remote areas afflicted by certain grave illnesses for which there is no adequate or accessible medical treatment. Her forthcoming book The Rule of Love: The Power of Presence for Reforming Health Institutions and Global Health Governance (OUP) investigates how love – together with justice – helps us revisit how we should structure our healthcare institutions at the local, national, and global levels, to foster an organizational culture of encounter, presence, and accompaniment with those suffer – without being inefficient or financially reckless. Current research projects include 'Lonely Mothers, Loving Institutions and Institutional Homemaking', which examines how the application of the philosophical concepts of love and homemaking could help us reimagine contemporary institutions, laws, and public policies such as those contemplating universal day-care and personalized perinatology (maternal-foetal medicine), in how they may impact mothers and as a consequence father, children, families, communities, and the common good more broadly.

Thana was a fellow at Princeton’s Institute for International and Regional Studies (2021) and is the co-director of the research program Dignity and Equity in Women’s Health of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights.

Academic Profile

Revd Dr Kevin Grove is an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

Born and raised in Montana, USA, Kevin Grove was ordained a Holy Cross priest at Notre Dame in 2010. After doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) and before joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Grove was a post-doctoral researcher at L’Institut Catholique in Paris, France and a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to his research and teaching, Grove serves at Notre Dame as an assistant faculty chaplain, Director of the Master of Divinity program, and as a pastoral resident for undergraduates in Dunne Hall.

Dr Natalie Andersson is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, in Professor Sam Behjati’s lab.

She is passionate about applying bioinformatics, including phylogenetic approaches, to explore how tumours change in time and space. Her research is focused on understanding the origin and development of the pediatric liver tumour hepatoblastoma.

Natalie studied physics and mathematics for 3.5 years before entering medical school at Lund University, Sweden. She graduated in 2021, which was followed by a 2 yearlong clinical training. In parallel to medical school and clinical training she pursued a PhD in cancer cell evolution in pediatric tumours. She defended the PhD in 2024. She explored how the tumours change and adapt over time, helping us understand why some tumours become resistant to treatment and how therapies could be improved. Currently she is working as a resident in clinical pathology at Lund university hospital, Sweden.

Dr Tsougarakis has been Assistant Professor of European Medieval History at the University of Crete since 2022. Before joining the University of Crete, he was Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Edge Hill University. His research focuses on the ecclesiastical history of the Venetian and Frankish states of Greece, especially in the period 1204 to 1500, with a particular focus on the Franciscans. He has also published on medieval pilgrimage, the crusades and heresy.

Latest publications
‘The Library and School of the Franciscans in Candia: A New Examination’, in The Friary of St Francis in Venetian Candia: Art, Learning and Sources, special issue of Frankokratia: A Journal for the Study of the Greek Lands under Latin Rule 6.2 (2025), 180-204
(With Donal Cooper), ‘The Fifteenth-Century Inventories of the Friary of St Francis, Candia: A New Edition and Commentary’, in The Friary of St Francis in Venetian Candia: Art, Learning and Sources, special issue of Frankokratia: A Journal for the Study of the Greek Lands under Latin Rule 6.2 (2025), 205-283

‘Art, Identity and the Franciscans in Crete’, in V. Foscolou και S. Kalopissi (eds), Intercultural Encounters in Medieval Greece after 1204 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 113-30.
‘Sharing on the Way to the Holy Land: The Shrine of Our Lady of Cassiope on the Island of Corfu’, Al-Masāq 34 (2022), 162-71
‘Perceptions of the Greek Clergy and Rite in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts to the Holy Land’, in N.G. Chrissis, A. Kolia-Dermitzaki and A. Papageorgiou (eds), Byzantium  and the West: Perception and Reality (11th-15th C.) (London: Routledge, 2019), 230-42

Dr Dabrowska is an Assistant Research Professor at the Department of Veterinary Medicine. Working within the Biomineral Research Group, her research focuses on the detection of trace metals in blood and understanding the impact of nanoparticles on human health.

She joined the University of Cambridge in 2019 as a Research Associate, working across the Departments of Physics and Veterinary Medicine. During that time, she contributed to the development of novel methods for detecting bacteria, with a particular emphasis on applications in low-resource settings. This work led to her being awarded a runner-up Cambridge Award for Research Impact and Engagement in 2025.

Prior to moving to Cambridge, Dr Dabrowska worked at the University of Southampton, participated in a transatlantic research expedition and taught at the Marine Biological Laboratory in the USA. Her research spanned a diverse range of projects, from developing anti-biofilm treatments for patients with cystic fibrosis to evaluating the environmental impact of deep-sea mining.

Dr Dabrowska is a Wellbeing Advocate, an alumna of the Aurora Leadership Programme, and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.