Our people

My research focuses on understanding the physics of the formation and evolution of galaxies and black holes across cosmic time. One of my main goals is to find the very first galaxies and black holes in the early Universe with cutting-edge observations obtained with the most advanced telescopes.

Sandro Tacchella is an Assistant Professor in Astrophysics working at the Department of Physics (Cavendish Laboratory) and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology of the University of Cambridge. Before joining the University of Cambridge in 2022, he was Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of UNIST in Ulsan, Korea. From 2017-2021, he was a CfA Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, USA. He has received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2017.

Academic Profile

Dr Sara Silvestri is interested in the contested meaning and multifaceted roles of religion in international relations, with particular attention to Islam and the Euro-Mediterranean region. Located at the intersection between IR, Politics, and Sociology, her research, publications and teaching are concerned with how religious identities, symbols and political theologies impact global governance; the way faith-based networks, social movements, and secular international institutions relate to each other; and the evolution of public policies responding to the challenges of migration, multiculturalism, Islamism, and terrorism.

Sara is based between London, where she is Senior lecturer in International Politics at City University, and Cambridge, where she undertook her PhD (at St John’s College) and ESRC Post-Doc. In Cambridge she is currently Bye Fellow and Director of Studies in HSPS (Politics) at St Edmund’s College and collaborates with the POLIS department and the Divinity faculty. Sara also held visiting positions at the Cambridge Muslim College, the University of Bristol, the Univ. of Padua, and was a Marie Curie Fellow in Paris.

After her first degree in Arts (La Sapienza University, Rome) and qualifying as a journalist, Sara went to the University of Cambridge to undertake and MPhil in EU affairs and PhD and Post-Doc on the Politics of and about Islam in Europe. She also specialised in EU migration policies at the ULB (Belgium). She then became interested in role of Christians (especially but not only the Catholic Church) in the governance of migration and refugee flows when she was a Research Associate of the Von Hügel Institute and a member of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Global Human movement .

Dr Silvestri has collaborated extensively with the policy and media world in her areas of expertise. She has worked in the Cabinet of the EU Commission President, has been a Research Associate at Chatham House (London); she has served as an advisor to the Brussels think tank European Policy Centre and the Annal Lindh Foundation for Intercultural Dialogue (Alexandria, Egypt) and as a 'global expert' for the UN Alliance of Civilisations. Sara currently serves as a Trustee of the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice and of the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament.

Her research has been funded inter alia by the ESRC, British Academy, British Council, Luce Foundation, FCDO, European Commission, Caritas Internationalis, the European Science Foundation.

My research focuses on teaching Arabic as a foreign language and Arabic sociolinguistics, in particular the intersection between the Standard and Spoken forms of Arabic.

Dr Saussan Khalil has published research on teaching Arabic as a foreign language, and the interplay between Standard and Spoken forms of Arabic (particularly the Cairene dialect) in print and online.

She is Director of Studies in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Academic Profile 

Publications

• Khalil, S, Arabic Writing in the Digital Age, Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003044321
• Oxford Arabic Dictionary, https://premium.oxforddictionaries.com/arabic/
• Kalamna Phonics Toolkit, https://kalamna.org/resources/

Awards & Recognitions 

• Humanities Innovation Week Competition 2nd place prize, 2021
• Cambridge University Arts and Humanities Impact Fund, 2020
• Cambridgeshire Prestige Awards, 2020
• iStudy Guide Best in Arabic Language Courses, 2019-20
• Loveday Memorial Award, 2012

My main field of research is animal rights law.

Dr Sean Butler studied Law at Oxford (St Edmund Hall) and the LSE, London, as well as Genetics at Cambridge (CPGS) before taking his PhD in social science at Imperial College, London. He supervises Roman Law and lectures Animal Rights Law in the Law Faculty, and is Co-Director of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law (https://animalrightslaw.org/).

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.

My research interest is the link between social relationships and the brain. At Harvard and Brigham & Women's Hospital, I study both brain development in children and brain function in clinical contexts.

Sofia completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit as a Marshall Scholar, where she used computational modelling to study the impact of childhood adversity on neural and psychological development. Her current work integrates neuroscience with neurology to illuminate the adaptive role of social relationships in brain function. More broadly, her interests include philosophy of science, philosophical anthropology, and the relationship between science and religion. Sofia graduated as valedictorian of the class of 2019 from the University of Notre Dame. In 2023, Pope Francis appointed her a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Academic Profile

• S Carozza, J Holmes, DE Astle, Testing Deprivation and Threat: A Preregistered Network Analysis of the Dimensions of Early Adversity, 2022, Psychological Science https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976221101045
• Sofia Carozza, Joni Holmes, Petra E Vértes, Ed Bullmore, Tanzil M Arefin, Alexa Pugliese, Jiangyang Zhang, Arie Kaffman, Danyal Akarca, Duncan E Astle, Early adversity changes the economic conditions of mouse structural brain network organization, 2023, Developmental Psychobiology, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dev.22405
• Sofia Carozza, Danyal Akarca, Duncan Astle, The adaptive stochasticity hypothesis: Modeling equifinality, multifinality, and adaptation to adversity, 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2307508120
• Sofia Carozza, Joni Holmes, Danyal Akarca, Duncan E Astle, Global topology of human connectome is insensitive to early life environments–A prospective longitudinal study of the general population, 2024, Developmental Science, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/desc.13490
• https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2409985122

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

Director of Studies for Linguistics

My research explores how form and content interdepend in reflecting upon, authoring, and participating in the mystery of God. I focus on Dante Alighieri’s theology and its Christological and Augustinian dimensions, expanding recently to developing a theology of (mass) incarceration in / beyond Dante.

Following study in philosophy, theology, and Italian literature, Thomas Graff pursued graduate research in theology at Trinity College, Cambridge. His doctoral thesis, ‘Dante, Augustine, and the Body of Christ in the Commedia’, investigates the ways in which Dante utilises Augustine to articulate a Christology of solidarity, or a vision of salvation in Christ as radically communal and interdependent, and what it might mean to read Dante's 'Inferno' in the light of such a Christological vision. Graff's research interests more broadly include Christian systematic theology, its relation to literary form, and the role of the humanities in the age of mass incarceration and 'organized abandonment' (Ruth Wilson Gilmore).

At St Edmund's, Graff is a Bye-Fellow, Director of Studies in Theology, Religion, and Philosophy of Religion, and Academic Officer at the Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry. He also serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame in England, and has taught in multiple prisons, including HMP Whitemoor (March, UK) and Westville Correctional Facility (Indiana, US).

Academic Profile

Tim is a chemist working to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. His current research focuses on protein aggregates; large clumps of protein that stick together in the brains of people with these diseases. By better understanding protein aggregates, Tim is aiming to develop a diagnostic test for neurodegenerative diseases.

Prior to his fellowship, Tim graduated from the University of Sydney with a BSc (Hon I) and a MPhil in Chemistry. During this time he worked in the group of Professor Richard Payne, where he developed new methods for the chemical synthesis of proteins. Tim then moved to the University of Cambridge where he completed his PhD with Professor Chris Hunter and first began his research into neurodegenerative diseases.