Our people

Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner is the Executive Director of the Woolf Institute and Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. Miriam joined the Woolf Institute in 2013 having been Research Associate at the Cambridge University Library and was appointed Director of Research in 2017. She is an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and teaches on the MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies: Muslim-Jewish Relations at the University of Cambridge.

She completed her doctorate at the University of Cambridge on Judaeo-Arabic in the Cairo Genizah and has written and edited numerous books and articles on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics of Judaeo-Arabic and Yiddish, scribal practice, and Jewish-Muslim relations in Egypt and Muslim Spain as reflected in the Genizah sources. These include Scribes as Agents of Language Change (2013), Merchants of Innovations. The Languages of Traders (2016) and A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic (2021). Her work has been featured on TV and Radio programmes, such as on BBC3 The Essay, in History Magazine and in documentaries on the Cairo Genizah.

In recent years, Miriam has become a popular speaker, invited to deliver academic keynote lectures and lectures to the wider public, including at the Hay on Wye Festival. She chairs Woolf Institute panels and webinars, including the Institute's How to talk about … series, which among other topics, has considered Religious rights and Freedom of Speech and Humour and Religion.

Miriam is also the Vice-President of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, and the Editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Al-Masāq.

Dr Diana Wood MA MD FRCP FHEA was the Vice-Master of St Edmund's College, from 1 September 2020 to 30 September 2022.

Dr Wood is Emeritus Clinical Dean at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine. She studied medicine at the University of Birmingham, qualifying in 1980.  Having followed postgraduate training and research posts in Birmingham, she became a Lecturer in Clinical Medicine at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London and later was appointed as Senior Lecturer, and then Reader, in Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at Barts and the London School of Medicine, University of London.  She moved to Cambridge in 2003 having been appointed as the University’s first full-time Director of Medical Education and Clinical Dean, a post which she held until the end of 2020.  She was an honorary consultant physician in the Department of Endocrinology at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2003 - 2020.

Diana was elected to the Fellowship at St Edmund’s College in October 2003.  Having retired from the substantive Clinical Dean role, she maintains an active involvement in the University’s student mental health and wellbeing programme and is a past Non-Executive Director and current University–appointed Governor of the Cambridge and Peterborough Foundation Trust.  She has served on numerous committees relating to undergraduate and postgraduate medical education locally, nationally, and internationally, with special interests in clinical education, clinical communication skills, and the development of professional skills, resilience, and wellbeing in medical students and junior doctors.

Petà Dunstan took both her first degree and PhD at Clare College, Cambridge. She is a modern church historian and a member of the Faculty of Divinity, where she was the Faculty Librarian. Her main area of research is Anglican Religious communities. Her publications include a history of the Society of St Francis, This Poor Sort and of the Anglican Benedictines, The Labour of Obedience.  More recently she published a biography of Dorothy Buxton, a 20th-century campaigner and a founder of the charity Save the Children, called Campaigning for Life. In College, she has been a tutor since the 1990s, as well as being Fellow Librarian, Tutor and has served on Council and other committees.

Dr Richard Jennings BSc DPhil is the Former Deputy Director of Cambridge Enterprise Ltd. the University’s wholly owned technology transfer company and a board member of both Cambridge Enterprise and Cambridge University Technical Services (CUTS). He is also a non-executive director of Ifm Education and Consultancy Services Ltd, the Institute for Manufacturing's knowledge transfer company.

Dr Palmer raised grants for the building of a unit of Comparative Neurology including the provision of three electron microscopes. His research was focussed on the relation of clinical signs to underlying neuropathology. He was the Senior Tutor at St Edmund's from 1974 - 1978.

Publications

• Introduction to Animal Neurology. Blackwell Scientific Publications 1976

Awards & Recognitions

• President of the British Neuropathological Society

Michael J.P.Robson, BA, Ph.D. (Cantab), Fellow, Dean of Chapel (1992-2011 as a member of the Friars Minor Conventual), Admissions Tutor for Undergraduates (1996-2002 and 2011-13), Tutor (2007-13), Director of Studies in Theology and Religious Studies (1996-2013) and Praelector (from 2003-15).  He has been an Emeritus Fellow since 2013.  He read Theology at the University of Kent in Canterbury (1974-77) and obtained a Ph.D. in the Faculty of Divinity as a member of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (1983-85). He was a lector at the Franciscan Study Centre, Canterbury, and an honorary lecturer at the University of Kent (1986-92). He obtained a dispensation from the priesthood and religious life in 2020. He was appointed socio esterno o aggregato of the Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, Rome, on 29 December 1988 and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society from September 1999. He has assessed book proposals submitted to Cambridge University Press, Brill and Oxford University Press. He has supervised undergraduates, marked M.Phil. questions and examined dissertations and Ph.Ds in Cambridge and elsewhere. He was elected as an honorary visiting fellow in the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, for 1999-2000.

Membership of historical & theological societies  2018, 14 April:

1988, 29 December: Appointed socio esterno o aggregato of the Istituto storico  dei Cappuccini in Rome on the recommendation of Revd.Dr. Servus Gieben, OFM. Cap.

1992, 1 October: elected a Fellow (Class A) of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, until 30 September 2013 and thereafter as an Emeritus Fellow.

1999, September: elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, resigned 2011.

1999/2000: Honorary Visiting Fellow in the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research at the University of York.

2004, 29 November: appointed as Associate Editor of Franciscan Studies, St Bonaventure’s University, New York.

2009, March: appointed as a member of the Conseil International of Revue d’histoire ecclésiatique, Leuven, for five years.

2011, October: appointed a member of the Comitato scientifico of Il Santo: rivista francescana di storia dottrina arte, Padua

2012, November: appointed a member of the Comitato scientifico of Frate Francesco, rivista di cultura francescana, Rome

2012, October: appointed to the scientific committee of Studii Franciscane: Revista Institutului Teologic Romano-Catolic Franciscan Roman, Romania.

2013, 1 October: elected emeritus Fellow of St Edmund’s College.

2017, 15 December: co-opted as a Socio ordinario of Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani in Assisi.

2018, 6 February: nominated for the editorial board of Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, Rome.

Unpublished doctoral thesis

Saint Anselm’s Influence upon Saint Bonaventure’s Theology of Redemption, Dissertation for a Ph.D., Cambridge University, approved 15 November 1988.  Unpublished thesis, BLDSC number: D60255.

Monographs

St Francis of Assisi: The Legend and the Life, Geoffrey Chapman, Cassell (London, 1997).  ISBN 0225667363, Paperback published in 1999, ISBN 0-225-66736-3. Reprinted by Continuum in 2002, ISBN 0826465080.

The Franciscans in the Medieval Custody of York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of York, Borthwick Papers, 93 (York, 1997), pp. 1-40, ISSN 0524-0913.  An Ebook.

The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Monastic Orders, general editor, Janet Burton), Boydell and Brewer (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. i-xiv, 1-239, ISBN 1-84383-221-6.  Paperback printed in 2009, ISBN 9781 843835158. An eBook from November 2011.

The Greyfriars of England (1224-1539): collected papers, Centro Studi Antoniani, 49 (Padua, 2012), pp. vii-xiv, 1-400.  ISBN 978-88-85155-90-9.  An Ebook from 2012.

A Biographical Register of the Franciscans in the custody of York, c.1229-1539, The Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, Record Series, 156 (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. ii-xviii, 1-307.   ISBN 978-0-9932383-9-0. An e-book.

Edited volumes

The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed.M.J.P.Robson, Cambridge Companions to Religion, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge, 2012), ISBN 978-0-521-76043-0, Paperback 9780521760430. An eBook. A Portugese translation by Alessandra Siedschlag, Francisco de Assis História e herança, Editora Santuário, Aparecida, São Paulo, Brazil, 2015, ISBN 978-85-369-0409-2.

The English province of the Franciscans (1224-c.1350), ed.M.J.P.Robson, The Medieval Franciscans, 14, Brill (Leiden, 2017), pp. i-xxx, 1-416. ISBN 978-90-04-33161-7, An E-book.

Co-edited volumes

Canterbury Studies in Franciscan History, I, ed.M.J.P.Robson and J.Röhrkasten, (Canterbury, 2008), ISBN 978-0-9549272-1-9.

Franciscan Organisation in the Mendicant Context: Formal and informal structures of the friars’ lives and ministry in the Middle Ages, ed.M.J.P.Robson and J.Röhrkasten, Vita Regularis, 44 (Münster, 2010), pp.i-xxiii, 1-414, ISBN 9783643108203.

Insanity and Divinity: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Studies in Psychosis and Spirituality, ed.J.Gale, M.J.P.Robson and G.Rapsomatioti, Routledge, Studies in Psychosis and Spirituality (London, 2013).  ISBN 978-0-415-60861-9

The Franciscan Order in the Medieval English Province and Beyond, ed.M.J.P.Robson and P.N.R.Zutshi, Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West (Amsterdam University Press, 2018).  ISBN 978-94-6298-647-3.

Testimony, Narrative and Image: Studies in Medieval and Franciscan History, Hagiography and Art in memory of Rosalind B.Brooke, eds.M.F.Cusato and M.J.P.Robson, The Medieval Franciscans, 20, Brill (Leiden, 2022), ISBN  978-90-04-50375-5

Rev Dr Geoffrey Cook MSc PhD CBiol FRSB CChem FRSC was elected to the Fellowship at the end of 1978. After a period as Secretary to the Fellows Council he was elected Vice-Master, an office he held for twenty five years. During this period he was responsible for petitioning the Earl Marshall for the grant of Arms for the College, as well as serving on the group of fellows charged with drafting Statutes that enabled the College to successfully petition the Privy Council for a Royal Charter. In 1986 he became Chairman of the College's newly established Development Committee and was responsible for coordinating and the delivery of the extensions to the Norfolk Building, the construction of the College Tower, the Library Building and the three residential buildings on the College's site. Retiring from the Governing Body in 2007 he was elected to a Life Fellowship.

Dr Cook read Chemistry at the University of Nottingham coming to Cambridge in 1959 to undertake his doctoral research in the Department of the then Regius Professor of Physic. From 1963-65 he was a Research Associate, Department of Biochemistry, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles. He returned to Cambridge as a Member of the External Scientific Staff of the Medical Research Council, initially at the Strangeways Research Laboratory, moving in 1976 to the Department of Pharmacology, where the University granted him an Associate Lectureship. In 1977 he was a Canadian Commonwealth Research Fellow, Biological Sciences Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton. In 1986 he transferred his MRC appointment to the Department of Anatomy, now part of the Department of Physiology, Development & Neuroscience, where as an Affiliated Lecturer he is undertaking research in developmental neurobiology.

In 1978 Geoffrey Cook was ordained as the first permanent deacon in the newly erected Diocese of East Anglia. He has chaired the Diocesan Commission for Dialogue and Unity since 1984 and was a Member of the Committee for Christian Unity of the RC Bishops' Conference of England & Wales 1984-92. He served as a Member of the Governing Council of the Cambridge Theological Federation 2008-14 and is currently the RC Member, Methodist-Anglican Panel for Unity in Mission. Chairman of the Cambridgeshire Ecumenical Council 1990-92 he has Chaired Shared Churches (Ely) Limited, a company established by the mainstream churches in the County to build and own church centres in the newly developing townships, from 2003-to date. He is a Member of the Society of Ordained Scientists and a Member of the Advisory Board, Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, a Governor of Ipswich School, Suffolk and Chair of Governors, St Bede's Inter-Church School, Cambridge.

Dr Philip Gardner was elected to the Fellowship of St Edmund’s in 1993.  Following a ten-year teaching career in West Country comprehensive schools, he was appointed to a Lectureship at the Faculty of Education in 1990 and latterly to a Senior Lectureship, specialising in the History of Education. He took his first and second degrees at the University of East Anglia, followed by a doctorate at the University of Sussex. His early research work focused on currents of informal working-class education in the nineteenth century and was the foundation for his prize-winning first book, The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England. His subsequent research interests, on which he has written extensively, include the history of the teaching profession, education and the British Empire in the early twentieth century, oral history, history and memory, and hermeneutical aspects of historical methodology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2010.

Within College Philip has undertaken a number of roles over the years, successively serving as Tutor, Director of Studies in History, Director of Studies in Education and, from 2008 to 2015, Secretary of the Governing Body. Between 1994 and 2018 he also served as College Archivist and latterly Fellow Archivist.

After having studied physics at EPFL, Switzerland, Arnaud Comment joined the group of Prof. Charles P. Slichter at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, for a PhD in the field of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). He then spent the following one and half years working in condensed matter physics at the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory (CNRS/Max Planck Institute). In 2005, he launched a dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) project at EPFL. He designed and implemented a DNP setup that he coupled to a preclinical MRI scanner for performing in vivo hyperpolarized NMR and MRI. He then joined the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of the University of Lausanne to lead the developments of biomedical applications of hyperpolarized MRI in Lausanne. In 2011, he was awarded a professorship grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation and became assistant professor at EPFL. In 2015, he joined General Electric Healthcare as senior scientist to further develop  the clinical applications of hyperpolarized ¹³C imaging. Since 2016, he has also been working on a project supported by an ERC Consolidator grant hosted by the University of Cambridge at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (CRUKCI).

The overall aim of his current research is to break new grounds in metabolic and molecular imaging and to lead novel methods and technologies towards clinical applications. His expertise in instrumentation along with his background in physics provides him with unique opportunities to translate discoveries from basic science research into medical applications. He is committed to a multidisciplinary approach which combines physics, engineering, chemistry, biology and medicine in order to develop hyperpolarized ¹³C MRI and new imaging methods based on secondary-ion mass-spectroscopy (SIMS) as technologies to answer key questions relating to mammalian metabolism both in healthy and diseased tissues.

Following training in experimental psychology and behavioural neuroscience as a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Dr. Chris Heath was recruited as a Lecturer in Health Sciences in the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences at The Open University.

At the OU he leads the Translational Neuroscience Research Group, a major objective of which is to utilise touchscreen-based assessment techniques to evaluate a wide variety of psychological constructs across laboratory models and both non-clinical and clinical populations. Recent work has focused on the development of touchscreen-based assessments for motivation, cost-benefit decision making and emotional state regulation and their application to both disease-related and non-disease related areas.

At Cambridge, Dr Heath has been the Director of Studies in the Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS) Tripos at St. Edmund’s College and has supervised and given lectures on various PBS courses.

John has an eclectic portfolio career, combining history, heraldry and philanthropy.

As a historian, John specialises in modern German history. His book The Kaiser, Hitler and the Jewish Department Store is due to be published in May 2022 by Bloomsbury. Regius Professor Sir Richard Evans was the supervisor for the PhD on which some of the volume is based. John and his research featured in two television documentaries: a highly-rated German public television documentary and a three-part documentary on the TESCO founder Sir Jack Cohen on Channel 5.

John has worked as a professional fundraiser for the University of Cambridge, including St Edmund’s, and has volunteered for several charitable organisations, such as the Order of St John and organisations of the Church of England.  John is a trustee of the largest independent sheltered housing scheme in London and continues working as a freelance fundraiser.

His heraldic work includes designing new coats of arms, identifying historic ones and hand-producing heraldic stationery, porcelain and other everyday items. John’s clients include royalty, aristocracy and clergy from all over the world.