Our people

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.

Martin studied music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and, specialising in composition, studied with, amongst others, the current Master of the King’s Music, Dame Judith Weir, and an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund’s, Sir James MacMillan. Following complaints from his teachers at the Conservatoire that he ‘thought too much’, his studies took a marked turn towards the intellectual side of the Arts: his Masters at Edinburgh University concerned the historiography of Michel Foucault and his PhD, at Wolfson College Cambridge, was on the aesthetic philosophy of Theodor Adorno.

He held a postdoctoral post at the University of East Anglia, and a Lectureship at the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow. At Cambridge he been College Teaching Associate at St John’s and Sidney Sussex Colleges, a Bye-Fellow in Music at Fitzwilliam, and is also a Panel Tutor in Philosophy for the Institute of Continuing Education at Madingley. Staying in the tradition of thinking too much, his current research arises from his unhealthy and obsessional interest in the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Martin Parker Dixon’s acquaintance with St Edmund’s began in 2018 when he took up the role of Director of Studies in Music. He is now also DoS for the Foundation Year and Deputy Admissions Tutor.

Former President of Ireland

Former Director, Wellcome Trust

Former Director of the Science Museum, London

Former Bishop of Ely

Former Master of Trinity College Cambridge

Salim Al-Gailani is a Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), University of Cambridge, where he lectures and supervises in the history of medicine. After completing his PhD on the history of antenatal care in Britain, he joined the Wellcome Trust-funded ‘Generation to Reproduction’ Strategic Award at Cambridge as a Research Associate. He has also held a fellowship at the John Rylands Research Institute at the University of Manchester. Broadly interested in the histories of modern medicine, biomedical sciences and public health, his research has focused in particular on transformations in the experience and management of pregnancy and childbirth since the late nineteenth century.

He is Director of Studies for our History and Philosophy of Science degree.

His writing has also explored the visual and material and cultures of science and medicine, including toy chemistry sets, anatomical images and educational films. He is currently working on a book that examines the history of folic acid as a technology of pregnancy, with its implications beyond reproduction for the globalization of biomedical knowledge, the management of risk and the role of consumer activism in shaping public health policy. Salim is Director of Studies in HPS at St Edmund’s College.