Our people

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.