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College news

The latest updates from St Antony’s.

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College news

The latest updates from St Antony’s.

Honorary Fellow Rashid Khalili

We are delighted to announce that Professor Rashid Khalidi (DPhil Modern History, 1970) has accepted the nomination for an Honorary Fellowship at St Antony’s. The College’s Governing Body elected him to celebrate his distinguished career, exemplifying everything St Antony’s stands for in terms of pursuing the very highest standard of scholarship, contributing to the policy world with the benefit of research knowledge, engagement with the critical issues in the world today, and inspiring through teaching and supervising future generations of scholars and policy makers.

© Alex Levac

© Alex Levac

Dr Tim Vlandas awarded British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship

Dr Tim Vlandas, Associate Professor of Comparative Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship. 

These prestigious Fellowships are designed to support outstanding individual researchers and to promote public understanding and engagement with humanities and social sciences. 

This award will allow Tim to carry out his research project ‘Ageing Democracies: Grey Power and Economic Performance’.  The project will theorise and explore the political consequences of ageing for economic performance. 

Nearly one in ten people in the world is now aged 65 and over. As countries age, the political priorities of a growing share of the electorate might shift, and elected governments may be forced to prioritise certain policies at the expense of others, which could in turn affect economic growth.  

Quantitative methods on a wide range of datasets will examine these political economy consequences of ageing.  

Dr Tim Vlandas

Dr Tim Vlandas

Professor Leigh Payne receives funding from the British Academy

Professor Leigh Payne has been awarded funding by the British Academy as part of the Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research programme.

The programme is designed to fund projects that bring together innovative, interdisciplinary, and international ideas from across the humanities and social sciences to offer valuable insights and perspectives of relevance to the questions of global (dis)order.

Leigh is the Principal Investigator on the project ‘The Rise of the Right-Against-Rights and Global (Dis)Order in Latin America and Beyond‘. By combining history, law, sociology, gender, and area studies, it broadens knowledge of, and develops strategies to reduce, the right-against-rights’ threat of disorder on fragile democracies in Latin America and beyond. The project is conducted in collaboration with Dr Sandra Botero (Universidad del Rosario), Dr Simón Escoffier (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), and Dr Gabriel Pereira (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán/CONICET).

Professor Leigh Payne

Professor Leigh Payne

Professor Neil Ketchley recognised in Recognition of Distinction Scheme 2024

Each year, the University of Oxford recognises academic excellence with the Recognition of Distinction Scheme. We are delighted to announce that the title of full professor has been conferred upon Neil Ketchley, Governing Body Fellow of St Antony’s College and Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations. He is also a member of the Middle East Centre.

Neil’s primary research focuses on social movements and collective protest in the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa.

Professor Neil Ketchley

Professor Neil Ketchley

SDG Impact Fund awarded to Governing Body Fellows

Governing Body Fellows Professor Rachel Murphy and Professor Leigh Payne have been awarded Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funding through the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Impact Fund. This Fund is awarded to projects from the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University that support SDG-focused knowledge exchange activities with non-academic partners in Oxford, the wider UK and internationally.

The projects are:

Empowering Social Workers and Caregivers in China’s Small Cities, Towns and Villages to Support Children Who Are Living Without Their Parents. Rachel Murphy, School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, partnering with Guiyu Academy and Le Qun Social Work Service Centre.

Reducing Extremists’ Threats to Democracy in Latin America. Leigh Payne, School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, partnering with Chilean Human Rights Secretariat and National Human Rights Institute, Chile.

Professor Rachel Murphy (left) and Professor Leigh Payne

Professor Rachel Murphy (left) and Professor Leigh Payne

In Memoriam: Allan Taylor

We are sorry to announce that our Emeritus Fellow and former Bursar, Allan Taylor, passed away on 8 August following a stroke at the age of 77.

Allan took a degree in History from the University of Bristol. He briefly worked at the Post Office, before joining the Inland Revenue where he was an HM Inspector of Taxes for 18 years. He then worked at KPMG for 12 years as a Partner overseeing the work of several teams in its Tax Division. This role included advising several universities, one of which was Oxford, and it was this experience which led him to apply for the role of Bursar at St Antony’s.

Allan took up the position of Bursar in January 2001 and it is no exaggeration to say that in the following few years he turned around the college’s finances. Allan was also instrumental in reorganising the College’s administrative structures as well as designing and introducing the model of the Management Executive Team which is still in place today. When he retired in 2011 and was elected to an Emeritus Fellowship, the College’s finances, administration and management were almost certainly in their best shape since the College was founded in 1950. Allan’s legacy will be fully recorded in the official history which is being prepared for the College’s 75th anniversary in 2025.

On appointment, Allan, together with his wife Rosalind, moved to Hamilton Road in Summertown (a mini-St Antony’s ghetto at the time) and they threw themselves into Oxford life.

Allan was a keen participant in college seminars, particularly those put on by the Parliamentary Visiting Fellows. On retirement, he took on various voluntary roles, including acting as a steward at Kelmscott Manor which he particularly enjoyed. Even after he and Rosalind moved back to Surrey to be nearer their children Allan continued to visit the college regularly to attend events.

Allan was a superb administrator. He was a hands-on manager who respected, and enjoyed the respect of, his team. He was a true champion of the student body and greatly improved the college facilities for them. He enjoyed interacting with the Fellows and academic visitors; he was genuinely interested in their work and extraordinarily tolerant of their foibles and occasional intransigence as he tried to introduce long-needed reforms. His stint as Bursar was transformational for the college.

Allan was a kind, thoughtful and generous colleague with a terrific sense of humour and the ability to get on with anyone from any walk of life. He will be much missed by all those who had the privilege to know him. Our thoughts are with Rosalind and the rest of the family at this very difficult time.

It is fitting that the College flag should fly at half-mast in Allan’s memory since this was an act that, when he was in office, he always oversaw himself.

Roger Goodman, Warden

In Memoriam: Robert Barnes

We are sorry to announce the sad news that Emeritus Fellow, Professor Robert H. Barnes, passed away on 6 July at the age of 79 in New Haven, Connecticut, following a fall.

Bob, as he was always known, was a mainstay of the Oxford anthropology community for almost four decades and a Fellow of the College for 25 years.

Bob was born in Jacksonville, Texas, and received his B.A. in Anthropology from Reed College before going on to obtain his B.Litt. and his D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Rodney Needham. He became a lecturer in the University of Edinburgh from 1974 to 1977 before taking up a lectureship in social anthropology back at Oxford in 1978 which he held until 1998 when he was awarded the title of Professor of Anthropology. On retirement in 2012, Bob moved to be with his wife, Ruth, in New Haven where she has been the Curator of Indo-Pacific Art at the Yale Art Gallery since 2010. He became an affiliate of Yale University’s Council of Southeast Asia Studies.

Bob was an anthropologist of kinship and Eastern Indonesia (where he carried out fieldwork over five decades), with a worldwide reputation in both fields. His best known publications include: Kedang: A Study of the Collective Thought of an Eastern Indonesian People (OUP, 1974); Josef Kohler, On the Prehistory of Marriage, Totemism, Group Marriage, Mother Right (University of Chicago Press, 1975).Two Crows Denies It: A History of Controversy in Omaha Sociology (Nebraska University Press, 1984); Sea Hunters of Indonesia: Fishers and Weavers of Lamalera (OUP, 1996); A Dictionary of the Kedang Language (Brill, 2013); Excursions into Eastern Indonesia: Essays on History and Social Life (Yale University, 2013).

Together with his colleagues Barry Cunliffe, Howard Morphy and Vernon Reynolds, he helped establish the undergraduate degree in anthropology and archaeology in the late 1980s. The degree quickly became one of the most popular courses in the University and he continued an active role in teaching and examining in it until his retirement.

When Bob was appointed to his position in Oxford in 1978, he was one of a small number of academics in Oxford who held a permanent teaching position which did not have an attached college fellowship. He was part of a campaign to rectify this clear anomaly and, as a result, was invited to join the Governing Body Fellowship of St Antony’s in 1987.  He quickly became a key member of the College community, filling multiple important roles, most notably acting several times as Director of the Asian Studies Centre and as a particularly engaged and committed Dean, during which he dealt skilfully with a very wide range of student problems. As a community we were very much in his debt.

Bob will be much missed by all those who were taught by and worked with him over his many decades in Oxford. Our thoughts are particularly with Ruth and his family. In 1969, Bob took Ruth to the top of the Kedang volcano in eastern Indonesia, where they saw the hole from which, according to local legend, mankind emerged (as the original twins) and spread over the globe. They enjoyed an incredibly rich and deep personal and professional relationship that lasted for many decades; when Bob suffered his fall, it was on the date of their 56th wedding anniversary.

Roger Goodman, Warden


Scholarship update

Graduate study in Oxford is expensive and the impact of increases in tuition fees is being felt by many of our students. As St Antony’s aims to be accessible to the best students from across the world, regardless of their financial situation, student support is the College’s fundraising priority.

View the story

Scholarship update

Graduate study in Oxford is expensive and the impact of increases in tuition fees is being felt by many of our students. As St Antony’s aims to be accessible to the best students from across the world, regardless of their financial situation, student support is the College’s fundraising priority.

DAC Scholarship endowment

With delight, gratitude and appreciation we can announce that we have reached the £1,000,000 target for the endowment of the DAC Scholarship. With this good news, we are able to receive an additional £500,000 from the University in matched funding.

The endowment will ensure that we can provide financial support to students who did their first degree at a university in a Development Assistance Country and have won a place to study at St Antony’s, but are unable to take up that place because of lack of funds.

Your generosity will be life-changing for generations of students to come.

Impact of scholarships

We’ve created a series of videos with St Antony’s students from around the world who will give you an insight into how their lives have been changed by scholarship funding. They’ll discuss how scholarships have not only supported their academic journeys, but also enriched their personal and professional growth.

Scholarships on offer for 2025/26

Scholarships on offer for 2025/26

To maximize the available resources (endowment as well as spend-funds that in both cases have been made possible by donors), the College is working with a range of partners to offer joint scholarships.

Africa Oxford Initiative:

St Antony’s DAC AfOx Scholarship (2): for all one-year degrees accepted by the College

Clarendon Fund (Clarendon Funding has been offered to augment these scholarships, if the correct conditions are met):

St Antony’s Warden’s Scholarship (1): for any course accepted by St Antony’s College

St Antony’s DAC Fund Scholarship (1): for any course accepted by St Antony’s College

Archie Brown & Alex Pravda Scholarship (1): for an MPhil Russian and Eastern European Studies

The Scott Family Scholarship Scholarship (1): for an MSc Japanese Studies (special preference will be given to a student with a disability)

Swire Scholarships

Swire Scholarship (4): available to students wishing to study for a graduate degree at the University of Oxford that is offered by St Antony’s College, who are permanent residents of China, Hong Kong SAR or Japan, and who have completed the majority of their formal education in their country of permanent residency.

The Swire Scholarships at St Antony’s are generously funded by the Swire Charitable Trust, founded by John Swire & Sons, recognizing the importance of international understanding and collaboration, and to support the exchange of knowledge and development of young scholars from China, Hong Kong SAR and Japan in Oxford.

Oxford Department of International Development

St Antony’s DAC Angelines Scholarship (1): for any degree offered by the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID)

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

St Antony’s Warden’s Fund UKRI Scholarship (1): for any course accepted by St Antony’s College

University of Oxford Academic Futures (Black Academic, Refugee or Care Experienced)

St Antony’s Warden’s Fund (1): for any course accepted by St Antony’s College

University of Oxford Palestinian Crisis Scholarship Programme

St Antony’s Birzeit Scholarship (1): for any course accepted by St Antony’s College

Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust

St Antony’s DAC Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust Scholarship (3): for all one-year degrees accepted by the College

All DAC Scholarships offered in partnerships are for eligible students who did their first degree at a university in a country that has been identified by the OECD to receive official development assistance.

Please contact the Academic Office if you have a query or need further information about any of these scholarships.

Thank you

None of these scholarships would have been possible without our partners and the generosity of many of you. Thank you, as ever, for your support.

If you would be interested in discussing a donation for a scholarship, whether large or small, or have questions about tax-efficient giving, please contact the Development Office.


Alumni updates

We’re proud to celebrate the milestones of every Antonian’s life!

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Alumni updates

We’re proud to celebrate the milestones of every Antonian’s life!

1950s

Bryan Cartledge (DPhil, 1955) is one of three nonagenarian Antonians who first met at St Antony’s in the 1950s and still keep in regular touch by email and telephone. They are Bertie Robson from the United States, Gunther Gillessen from Germany and Bryan Cartledge from the UK. Apart from the challenges of old age they are all in reasonable health and enjoy remembering the College as it was in its infancy under Bill Deakin and James Joll.

1980s

Anuson Chinvanno (DPhil International Relations, 1983), Director of International Studies Center, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, and Jittipat Poonkham (MPhil International Relations, 2008), Associate Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University, Thailand, met with Charles Powell (History, 1981), Director of Elcano Royal Institute, Spain, at the Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid.

George Gigauri (MSc Forced Migration, 2002) married Anna Apkhazava (St. Catherine’s, m. 2020) in London, UK.

Sune Haugbølle (DPhil Modern Middle Eastern Studies, 2001) and his Antonian partner Lindsay Whitfield (DPhil Politics, 2000) report that their daughter Sofia (born in Oxford, 2005) is now studying History at the London School of Economics.

Dr Jasna Lambert (Diplomatic Studies, 2006) married the Parisian astrogeologist and planetologist Dr Philippe Lambert (formerly affiliated with NASA) on 14 February 2024 in Bruxelles.

Xibai Xu (MPhil Politics (Comparative Government), 2009) formed a civil partnership with Dr Di Wang at Lincoln College Chapel on 06 July 2024.

2010s

Marina Pérez de Arcos (MPhil International Relations, 2010) married Sebastian Heckl-Steinböck in Oxford on 14 July 2024.

2020s

Mirna Amoêdo (MSc Environmental Change and Management, 2022) was diagnosed with cancer right before Christmas of 2023, and had surgery to remove it on 30 January 2024. To celebrate being cancer-free, she’s raised money for Cancer Research UK and participated in the marathon with former housemates from St. Antony’s – some were studying for their final exams during the hike!


Sic itur ad astra

Celebrating Antonian accomplishments that have been recognised with prizes or awards.

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Sic itur ad astra

Celebrating Antonian accomplishments that have been recognised with prizes or awards.

1960s

Sheila Fitzpatrick (DPhil Modern History, 1969) has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Melbourne.

1970s

Lewis Siegelbaum (DPhil History, 1976) is the recipient of the Distinguished Achievements award from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) to be presented at its annual convention in November 2024.

1980s

David Cleary (DPhil Anthropology, 1988) has been awarded the 2024 Marsh Prize (Royal Anthropological Institute) for contributions to the public sphere by someone trained in anthropology.

Iftikhar Haider Malik (Senior Member, 1989) won the UBL Award for the best book in English in Pakistan in 2023 for his volume The Silk Road and Beyond: Narratives of a Muslim Historian.

Banuta Rubess (DPhil Modern History, 1982) was granted a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023 from the Anšlavs Eglītis and Veronika Janelsiņa Foundation. This was an award of $20,000 US, for her contributions to Latvian culture while living abroad.

1990s

David E. Hoffman (Russia Studies, 1995) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for the series Annals of Autocracy, published in 2023.

Michael Ignatieff (Visiting Fellow 1993-95, Honorary Fellow 2017) has been conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Cambridge University and has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Prize, Spain, 2024.

John Bosco Lourdusamy (DPhil Modern Indian History, 1995) has been awarded the World History Association’s Bentley Prize (given for ‘significant contribution’ to World History), for the co-authored book Moving Crops and the Scales of History. The same book has also been selected for the 2024 Sidney Edelstein Award from the Society for History of Technology (SHOT) – given for ‘an outstanding book’ on the history of technology published in the last three years.

Tim A. Mau (DPhil Politics, 1993) is the recipient of the 2024 Pierre DeCelles Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration.

2000s

Melanie Griffiths (DPhil Anthropology, 2007) has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, to run in 2025. This will allow her to conduct repeat interviews with mixed citizenship families in the UK facing a member’s deportation or removal from the country, and to publish a book from this longitudinal research.See Less

Alvaro Herrero (DPhil Politics, 2002) was awarded a Fulbright Visiting Research Fellowship to conduct research on judicial innovation at Georgetown University.

Manzil e Maqsood (DPhil Education, 2008) has been awarded the Commonwealth Alumni Community Engagement Fund (ACEF) 2024 award and is the only recipient of this award from Pakistan this year. She has also been invited to ADB’s CAREC Women Business Forum to take part in a panel discussion on Empowering Women in STEAM and Leadership.

Dr Artemis Papatheodorou (MPhil Modern Middle Eastern Studies and DPhil Oriental Studies, 2007) was awarded a Global Fellowship with her project Modern Mediterranean Archaeological Regimes in a Global Context (MMARe) in the latest round of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA). This fellowship will allow her to investigate the Mediterranean legislation on antiquities from 1789 to 1945 individually and comparatively.

Ilan Peleg (Senior Associate Member, 2002) has received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association for Israel Studies (the largest international organization for the study of Israeli history, culture, society and politics).

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm (Visiting Student, Modern History, 2003) was awarded the American Academy of Religion ‘Excellence in the Study of Religion (Constructive-Reflective Studies)’ book award for his 2021 monograph Metamodernism: The Future of Theory (University of Chicago Press).

Sally Tomlinson (MSc Environmental Change and Management, 2002) has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Glasgow.

2010s

Immaculata Abba (MSt Global and Imperial History, 2019) won the inaugural Abebi Award in Afro Non-fiction for an essay she wrote on the aftermath of the 2005 Sosoliso Plane Crash in her community.

Federico Bonomi (MPhil Politics (European Politics and Society), 2018) has received a prestigious award from the Italian House of Representatives for Asimov AI, the legis-tech startup he founded, for an application of AI to parliamentary works.

Jun Han (DPhil Sociology, 2017) received the For Good Awards of Top 10 Annual Academic Research, issued by the China Social Enterprise and Impact Investing Forum, for two of his co-authored books in 2022 and 2023.

Fusako Innami (DPhil Oriental Studies, 2011) received the Fulbright Scholar Award 2024-25 to conduct her book-length research, Gestural Writing: Performance, Topography, Trace at UC Berkeley (Dept of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies).

Andrew Littlejohn (MPhil Social Anthropology, 2010) was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his new project of ‘climate citizenship’.

Sheng Peng (DPhil History, 2015) was named the 2024-25 Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Dr Becky Self (MSc Sociology, 2019) received two awards for fundraising for DigDeep: ‘Patient Experience Advocate of Tomorrow Runner-up’ with the Patient Experience Network and the ‘Charitable Work Outside of LJMU Award’ at the Schools of Public and Allied Health and Nursing and Advanced Practice Student Awards 2023. She put together a team of 30 to climb Kilimanjaro (20 climbed) to raise money for the charity DigDeep while completing her PhD and raised £37,000.


Plus est en vous

The Antonian community represents an incredibly diverse range of professional paths all over the world. Here are some recent career updates.

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Plus est en vous

The Antonian community represents an incredibly diverse range of professional paths all over the world. Here are some recent career updates.

1960s

Peter Burke (DPhil History, 1960) lectured at the Universidad de la República, Montevideo. He and his wife Maria Lúcia were declared by the city to be ‘illustrious visitors’. He also delivered the second series of Gombrich Memorial Lectures at the Academy of Art, Hangzhou.

Sheila Fitzpatrick (DPhil Modern History, 1969) has been a Professor at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne since 2020, as well as Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago.

1970s

Paul Gootenberg (MPhil Latin American Studies, 1979) is retiring as Distinguished Professor of History & Sociology at Stony Brook University (SUNY) Sociology after more than three decades of teaching.

Leandro Prados de la Escosura (DPhil Modern History, 1976) is Emeritus Professor, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid.

Philip S Khoury (Junior Associate Member, 1974-77) has stepped down after 15 years as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut. He remains Vice Provost and Ford International Professor of History at MIT.

Brian McBeth (DPhil Economics, 1975) is in the process of having three of his books translated from English into Spanish by Ban Caribe, Venezuelan bank in Caracas. The books will be available to download free of charge from the Ban Caribe platform. He has also written a homage to Malcolm Deas for the Venezuelan National Academy of History. Brian, Malcolm and Professor Eduardo Posada were made corresponding members of the Academy at the same time.

Dr Adel Moustafa Sadek (DPhil Economics, 1978) has retired.

1980s

John Goldberg (MPhil Politics, 1983) is serving as Interim Dean of the Harvard Law School.

Iftikhar Haider Malik (Senior Member, 1989) was elected in 2023 to the Council of the Royal Historical Society. He has also become a Trustee and Senior Librarian at the Oxford Union Society.

Maria Clara R M do Prado (Economic Development, 1981) has long been a journalist in Brazil, specialising in economic subjects. The course she took in Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Rosemary Thorp, was fundamental for her career.

Banuta Rubess (DPhil Modern History, 1982) is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto.

Setsuya Sato (MPhil Economics, 1980) retired from Tokyo University in 2022.

Pierre Sauve (MPhil Development Studies, 1982) serves as a Senior Trade Specialist in the Geneva office of the World Bank’s Global Trade and Regional Integration unit.

Pierre L Siklos (DPhil Economics, 1988) was a keynote speaker at the June 2024 European Association of Banking History Conference hosted by the National Bank of Hungary in Budapest. His talk was entitled Reflections on the Second Hungarian Hyperinflation and its Broader Significance.

Mary Vincent (DPhil Modern History, 1983) is Vice President for Education, University of Sheffield.

1990s

Robert William Aspinall (DPhil Politics, 1994) is Professor at the Center for Global Education and Japanese Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.

Tim Benbow (MPhil and DPhil International Relations, 1990) has been promoted at King’s College London, and is now Professor of Strategic Studies.

Jennifer Bumgarner (MSc Social Policy, 1999) has served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs with the US Department of Energy since her appointment by President Biden in December 2021. From July 2023 to February 2024, she also served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at US DoE.

Varapat Chensavasdijai (DPhil Economics, 1993) is IMF Advisor and Mission Chief for Ecuador.

Sarah Gordon (née Ross) (MPhil Latin American Studies, 1990) stepped down as the Founding Chief Executive of the UK’s Impact Investing Institute last year and is now a Visiting Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute on climate and the environment at the LSE.

Jens R Hentschke (Volkswagen Area Studies Visiting Fellow, 1993) was awarded the 2023 Fellowship by the Iberoamerican Institute in Berlin.

Jeffrey Kahn (MPhil Russian and East European Studies and DPhil Politics, 1994), University Distinguished Professor at the Dedman School of Law, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, will be a Research Visitor in residence at Oxford University’s Bonavero Institute of Human Rights during Hilary and Trinity Terms 2025.

Naotaka Kimizuka (British Political and Diplomatic History, 1993) is Professor at the Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama, Japan.

Professor Huck-ju Kwon (DPhil Political Science, 1990) of Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Administration became the first Korean member of the British Academy of Social Sciences.

Tim A Mau (DPhil Political Science, 1993) has been promoted to Full Professor.

Hartmut Mayer (DPhil International Relations, 1994) took on a new position as Steven Muller Professor at Johns Hopkins University, SAIS Bologna in July 2024. This follows 30 years in Oxford as a student and an academic, which among many other roles included a stint as Director of the European Studies Centre at St. Antony’s (2017-2022).

Steven McGuire (DPhil International Relations, 1991) is now Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at the University of East Anglia.

Martin Mevius (DPhil Modern History, 1998) is a Member of Cabinet and Communication Advisor to Ylva Johansson, European Commissioner for Home Affairs.

Leland Miller (MSt Modern History, 1999) has been appointed Commissioner to the congressionally-mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, with a term expiring on December 31, 2025. He remains the Chief Executive Officer of China Beige Book, a data analytics firm focused on the Chinese economy.

Stephanie Evaline Mitchell (DPhil History, 1997) has been made Valor Distinguished Chair in Humanities at Carthage College, Wisconsin, USA.

Patrick O Cohrs (International History, 1998, Alistair Horne Fellow, 2006-7) serves as Director of the new Centre for History, Strategy and International Order at Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, which he also co-founded. CHIOS will be the German hub of a wider transatlantic and global ‘Alliance for History and International Order’ that brings together many of the world’s leading institutions in these vital spheres.

Paul Riseborough (MPhil European Politics and Society, 1999) has been appointed Managing Partner for the UK and Ireland at management consultancy Capco.

Arturo Sánchez-Gutiérrez (MPhil Latin American Studies, 1996) is Global Leader Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Government, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Santa Fe, México City.

Neena Shenai (MPhil International Relations, 1998) joined the Washington, DC, office of the global law firm WilmerHale as a partner in the International Trade, Investment & Market Access Group in February 2024.

Zachary Shore (DPhil History, 1995) is a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin for the fall semester.

Ximena Fuentes Torrijo (DPhil Public International Law, 1994) has been appointed as Ambassador of Chile to the United Kingdom.

Lucy Elizabeth Victorin (Master of Public Policy, 1999) is at the US Department of State.

Marcella C D Vigneri (DPhil Economics, 1998) is Principal Economist at Save the Children UK, and Associated Research Fellow with the Child Protection Research Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

2000s

Ariana Adjani (MPhil Russian and East European Studies, 2005) has been elected Governor at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. As one of eight candidates, she received strong support from the members of her constituency, Oxford City, in a major recognition of her commitment to healthcare research and innovation. She is dedicated to the fields of healthy ageing and longevity through the advancement of novel, safe treatment for different chronic diseases, as well as the overall improvement of patient care in Oxfordshire and beyond.

Dr Roham Alvandi (MPhil International Relations, 2005) has been appointed as the founding Director of the Iranian History Initiative at the London School of Economics.

Jessica Ashooh (MPhil and DPhil, International Relations, 2006) was promoted to Vice President of Policy of Reddit. In that role, she manages the company’s global government relations and public policy work.

Florencia Lopez Boo (DPhil Economics, 2009) will be joining New York University as a Full Professor of Economics and Applied Psychology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, where she will also be directing the prestigious Global TIES Centre for Children.

Geoffrey Cameron (MPhil Comparative Government, 2006) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Guelph.

Bradley J Cook (DPhil Modern History, 2000) currently serves as the president of the American University of Bahrain, the first comprehensive American-model co-educational university in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Under his leadership, AUBH became the first US-accredited university in Bahrain and among only a handful in the GCC and MENA region.

Sophie Copeman (MPhil International Relations, 2008) has launched her own consulting and advisory business, SCHC Advisors. She’s enjoying working with clients from the US, UK and Continental Europe, supporting them on a range of organisational development, recruitment and strategy projects.

José Galindo (MPhil Latin American Studies, 2000) is currently a visiting professor at Harvard University. He is writing a global history of the origin of jazz, which includes the specific influence of Latin America in early New Orleans jazz.

Sune Haugbølle (DPhil Modern Middle Eastern Studies, 2001) has been appointed Professor in Global Middle East Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark.

Dr Jasna Lambert (Diplomatic Studies, 2006) is moving to Dushanbe after six years in the HQ of EU diplomacy, at a managerial post in the European External Action Service in Brussels. She will be responsible for political files within the EU Delegation to Tajikistan.

Carlos Magarinos (Senior Associate Member, 2006) is Honorary Professor at Wuchang University of Technology and has been appointed Chairman for Latin America of the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Manzil e Maqsood (DPhil Education, 2008) joined NUST after leaving Oxford, a well-reputed university in Pakistan, and spearheaded a programme called MS Innovative Technologies for Learning. After a few years, she launched her own start-up called Oxbridge Innovative Solutions, named after her academic experiences at both Cambridge and Oxford. The primary focus of the company is STEM/STEAM education, particularly for girls in K-12 and beyond.

Miriam Prys-Hansen (DPhil International Relations, 2004) has been awarded an Honorary Professorship at the Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany.

Victoria Schofield (Alistair Horne Fellow, 2004) continues to write and lecture on Jammu and Kashmir and will shortly begin work on writing a new history of The Oxford Union.

Sally Tomlinson (MSc Environmental Change and Management, 2002) is Professor Emerita at Goldsmiths University of London and Hon Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford.

Marian Vidaurri (MSc Latin American Studies, 2005) graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Washington, DC) as a Doctor of International Relations (DIA).

Lindsay Whitfield (DPhil Politics, 2000) is Professor of Business and Development at Copenhagen Business School.

2010s

Kirsten Asdal (MSc Contemporary Chinese Studies, 2014) and Charlotte Asdal (MSc Contemporary Chinese Studies, 2014) partnered up to launch a China political risk research firm this year. After both serving as surface warfare officers in the US Navy, they returned to the field of China studies as colleagues at the risk advisory firm Garnaut Global. Now they use their combination of academic, practical, and corporate expertise in studying China to help global investors and corporations make risk-informed decisions about their China market exposure.

Bilal Baloch (DPhil Politics, 2013) recently moved to Abu Dhabi, UAE, to join a venture capital fund as a partner after founding, building, and scaling his market intelligence start-up in the US over the past six years. Shorooq Partners is the most active early-stage investor in the region and here they will be identifying and investing in exciting new ventures in fintech, AI, biotech, and beyond. They will be working particularly closely with founders to help them grow their businesses and create social and economic impact in fast-growing markets.

Priyanka Bijlani (MSc Comparative and International Education, 2019) has embarked on a dynamic career path as a public policy manager and specialist in the UAE, immersing herself in the local culture and learning the Emirati Arabic dialect. Alongside her professional endeavours, she has published a contemporary poetry collection. Titled ‘The Essence of Karak’, it explores the transformative power of storytelling through multicultural and multilingual verse, weaving together anecdotes and shared experiences to convey a message of resilience and continuous evolution of human nature, reflecting her passion for languages and diverse poetic traditions.

Federico Bonomi (MPhil Politics (European Politics and Society), 2018) has co-founded and is CEO of Asimov AI, a start-up that uses AI technologies to analyse legislative information.

Neil Brown (Visiting Fellow, 2010-11) has joined Deltroit Asset Management after 8 years as Geopolitical Strategist at UK hedge fund CQS. He has been appointed a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and has joined the organising committee of the London Defence Conference.

Aylon Cohen (MPhil Political Theory, 2012) is returning to Oxford in October 2024 as a Departmental Lecturer in Feminist Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations.

Bihi Iman Egeh (MSt Diplomatic Relations, 2018) was appointed as Minister of Finance of the Federal Government of Somalia and led a successful Debt Relief for Somalia which increased domestic revenue by 30%.

Simon Escoffier (Sociology, 2011) has a new position as Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Elham Fakhro (DPhil Socio-Legal Studies, 2014) has joined the Harvard Kennedy School as a Fellow for Fall 2024.

Christopher J Gerry (Governing Body Fellow and Dean of College) has been appointed Rector of the University of Central Asia.

Jun Han (DPhil Sociology, 2017) has been appointed Senior Research Manager at US SIF.

Nathan Harper (MPhil Social Anthropology, 2010) is now the Manager for the Office of Immigrant & Refugee Affairs, which is a sub-office within the Office of the Mayor in Pittsburgh. The goal and focus on the work will be to strengthen the conditions within government, as well as in the community, so that Pittsburgh is a place where immigrants feel safe and welcome, and can thrive as new citizens of this country.

Sebastian Jackson (MSc African Studies, 2012) is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia.

Krzysztof Kokoszczyński (MPhil Russian and East European Studies, 2013) successfully defended his dissertation and received a PhD in Economics from Warsaw’s Kozminski University (2024).

Youngeun Koo (MSc Migration Studies, 2014) has taken up the role of Associate Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at Lund University from August 2024.

Kuukuwa Manful (MSc African Studies, 2014) is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan.

Daniel Meier (Senior Associate Member, 2011) has won the Junior Professor Chair in Geopolitics of Borders in the Middle East at Sciences Po Grenoble.

Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt (DPhil Politics, 2016) started a permanent Lectureship (Assistant Professor) in the Politics of China at SOAS, University of London, in September 2024.

Preity Mohyal (MSc Contemporary India, 2012) is currently Economic Crime Manager at Virgin Money and recently completed the Oxford Saïd Business School Artificial Intelligence Programme.

Chris O’Flaherty (Hudson Fellow, 2017) is now Senior Technical Adviser at The Nautical Institute. He is leading The Nautical Institute’s engagement and representation at the International Maritime Organisation in London, driving forward safe, secure, and environmentally-friendly shipping.

Dr Kadira Pethiyagoda (Senior Associate Member, 2012) is standing for Oxford Chancellor.

Lincoln Pigman (MPhil Russian and East European Studies, 2018) changed jobs in November 2023, becoming a senior associate at Wallbrook, part of Anthesis.

Patrick Quinton-Brown (MPhil and DPhil International Relations, 2014) is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Singapore Management University (SMU).

Cristina Blanco Sío-López (Fellow, 2018) has been selected as Expert Peer-reviewer in the Humanities and Social Sciences for the European Commission Evidence Review Report The successful and timely uptake of AI in the EU, published by the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAPEA).

Sishuwa Sishuwa (MSc African Studies, 2010) is currently a Senior Lecturer in History at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He works on the political history of southern Africa and has authored over 15 peer-reviewed publications, including the book Party Politics and Populism in Zambia (James Currey, 2024) and an article on ‘racialised nationalism and the rule of law’ – for which he won the prestigious Terence Ranger prize from the Journal of Southern African Studies. He serves on the editorial boards of major African Studies journals.

Rebecca Stieva (MSc History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, 2014) received a PhD in History, McGill University, Fall 2023.

Victor J Willi (History, 2016) has recently been awarded an EU Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, where he will write his second book on the History of the Red Sea from 1869-2024. Since 2021, Victor has also been running a new think tank focused on the Middle East: the Middle East Institute Switzerland (MEIS). MEIS focuses on the geopolitical, economic, technological, energy-related and cultural dynamics of the MENA region and its international relations.

David Zakarian (DPhil Oriental Studies, 2011) has been appointed Haig and Isabel Berberian Endowed Chair of Armenian Studies at the California State University, Fresno.

2020s

Aurelia Finch (MPhil Modern Middle Eastern Studies, 2022) has been appointed as the director of the UK-MENA Network, a group which aims to connect university students and young professionals in the UK to the MENA region through events and trips. In August, a delegation from the network visited Jordan. They had the pleasure of meeting HRH Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, an Oxford alumnus, and friend of St Antony’s Professor Avi Shlaim. The network will continue to organise annual trips to countries in the MENA region, and Aurelia looks forward to seeing more Antonians getting involved.

Chau Chit Hang Jason (MPhil Comparative Social Policy, 2021) is now a foreign affairs writer at the Economist Newspaper.

Rochana Jayasinghe (MSt World Literatures in English, 2022) has been appointed Communications Specialist of the High Commission of Sri Lanka in the United Kingdom.

Robert Lee Kilpatrick (Academic Visitor, 2022) is now the Executive Director of a new venture: Scientific American Health + Transformation Initiative.

Alvaro Fernandez de la Mora (DPhil Law, 2020) joined King’s College London as a Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law in January 2024.

Arzu Öztürkmen (MEC Lecturer and Collaborator, 2005) became the Chair of the Department of History (2022) and Asian Studies Center (2015) at Boğaziçi University.

Andrii Vyshnevskyi (Master of Public Policy, 2020) has a 35% share and the position of Chief Executive Officer of Osnovy Publishing, one of the oldest and most respected publishing houses in Ukraine.


Books by St Antony’s Fellows

Featuring Eugene Rogan, Dan Healey and Robert Service

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Books by St Antony’s Fellows

Featuring Eugene Rogan, Dan Healey and Robert Service

Discover the stories behind some recent publications by St Antony’s Fellows Eugene Rogan, Dan Healey and Robert Service.

The Damascus Events

Eugene Rogan

The Damascus Events is a project that has been 35 years in gestation.  I first came across the material that inspired the book as a doctoral student in 1989, two years before I completed my PhD and took up my Oxford post.  On that fateful day in the National Archives in Washington, DC, I rescued from oblivion over a decade’s worth of reports from the first US vice-consul to Damascus.

Entirely hand-written, in Arabic, in antique notebooks, the Archivists had no way of identifying the records which had gathered dust since they were first repatriated from Damascus sometime in the first half of the twentieth century.  The reports began in 1859, just one year prior to a devastating massacre in the Christian quarters of Damascus, and continued for over a decade afterwards, documenting the city’s reconstruction.

The vice-consul was a brilliant intellectual named Mikhayil Mishaqa who is recognized as one of the leading lights of the Arabic literary renaissance.  It was the greatest archival discovery of my career.  Over the intervening years I have added to the Mishaqa material through archival research in Britain, France, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria, but kept putting the project aside to write other books – The Arabs in 2009, The Fall of the Ottomans in 2015.  It was thus very gratifying to finally sit down and write the Damascus book all these years later.  It is, no doubt, a different book from what I would have written twenty years ago.  In that sense, I am glad I waited.

Professor Eugene Rogan

The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin’s Labour Camps

Dan Healey

Stalin’s labour camps – the notorious Gulag system – were places of injustice, suffering, and mass mortality. The Gulag exploited prisoners, forcing them to work harder for better rations in shocking conditions. From 1930 to 1953, 18 million people passed through this penal-industrial empire. Many inmates, not reaching their quotas, succumbed to exhaustion, emaciation, and illness.

It seems paradoxical that any medical care was available in these camps. But it was in fact ubiquitous. By 1939 the Gulag Sanitary Department employed 10,000 doctors, nurses, and paramedics – about 40% of whom were themselves prisoners.

While scholars of the Gulag have long been aware that medical facilities existed in the camps and knew about their work through some of the most vivid prisoner memoirs, they have avoided systematic study of Gulag medicine. Explaining the paradox of medical care in places of mass morbidity and mortality was daunting; and the great chronicler of the Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, had simply dismissed Gulag medicine as complicit with Stalinist inhumanity.

In The Gulag Doctors I set out to understand the people who worked in the camp hospitals. Reading biographies and memoirs by doctors, paramedics, and nurses, and comparing what they experienced with what the archives of local and central Gulag administrators recorded, I sought to look beyond Solzhenitsyn’s condescension at how this service functioned and evolved. Travelling to Gulag-built cities like Magadan and Ukhta, I discovered how local historians and museum curators hail these prisoner-medics as founders of their cities’ healthcare services.

What became apparent as I researched the lives of medical workers, like Nina Savoeva, a young graduate physician who in 1940 ‘chose’ to work in the Magadan camps as a freely contracted employee of the Gulag, or Lev Sokolovsky, a naval psychiatrist arrested in 1940 who established psychiatric care for the prisoners of Ukhta, was that Gulag medicine was not as detached from civilian Soviet medicine as Solzhenitsyn claimed. Rooting their careers in the broad sweep of Soviet medical history and investigating the ties between Gulag and ‘free’ Soviet healthcare, became a focal theme of this book. My book thus offers a history of Soviet medical values and medical practices – a field that remains poorly understood.

The Gulag Doctors also illuminates the lives and experience of an occupational group in the camps who contended with two forms of power: the ‘sovereign power’ of the camp commandants and bureaucrats, and the ‘disciplinary power’ of the medical world. Doctors, whether prisoner or free, in Gulag hospitals and clinics walked a fine line between what camp bosses expected and what their medical training dictated.

Like geologists, engineers, and other experts hired by or imprisoned in the camps, medical workers contributed to the construction of new cities and industries in remote regions over a quarter century of the Stalin era. I describe how the memory of their contributions to building new Soviet cities in Russia’s Far North and Far East is celebrated today. Local memory of the Gulag doctors makes a troubling but fascinating contribution to the ways in which cities like Magadan, Vorkuta, Norilsk, and Ukhta remember their penal roots.

Professor Dan Healey, Emeritus Fellow

Blood on the Snow

Robert Service

Not yet another history of the Russian Revolution, eh? Well, I hope the book has something new to say about a year that transformed what could and did happen around the world for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.

I started from a feeling that too many accounts underplay the impact of the First World War, and my aim was to give due space to the exceptional strains that the protracted conflict with Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans had on the political, social and economic conditions in the empire of Nicholas II. Without Russia’s entry into the war, there probably would still have been revolution in the Russian capital, but it would not have inevitably turned out to be the earthquake that happened between February and October 1917.   And that meant that I wanted to look not just at the Imperial court and the Duma opposition, but also at how so-called ordinary people reacted to and coped with – or failed to cope with – the terrible hardships inflicted by the wartime campaigns.

Another of the book’s purposes was to bring to light the rationales motivating the ruling groups from Tsar Nicholas’s cabinet to Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional and finally to the Bolshevik party dictatorship. As far as I know, no previous author has scrutinised the minutes of all three administrations. Lots of documents were already available but neglected before the fall of Soviet communism in 1991, and I collected more records in subsequent years.   Not everything that a minister or a commissar did was senseless. Moreover, many of the difficulties faced by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin during and after the Civil War had already confronted the country’s rulers in some way or another in 1914-1917.  What emerges is something that I have always thought: namely that however dictatorial a Russian ruler has been, Russia remained and will remain an extremely difficult state and society to rule.

Allied to this was my objective to examine historical sources of personal experience.   Traditionally this has been achieved by turning to memoirs, usually written many years afterwards. Russian archives are now practically closed to foreign scholars. But the tin is not yet hermetically sealed. Diaries are unusually useful in showing how people at the time – not just the politicians – thought about what was happening in the ageing Russian Empire or the nascent Soviet Union. The judgements in them on Nicholas II, Kerensky and Lenin were always perceptive. They brought home to me that most of the populace in that period held themselves back from political or military involvement if they could help it. Each of them also had complex attitudes to what was occurring. Nothing could be more wrong than the idea that Russians and other national groups had stereotypical outlooks. Ordinariness is not the same as simplicity or stupidity.

I wrote this book to get the Russian Revolution out of my system. As usual, the research and the writing only served to make me think that there is so much to learn about and, more especially, to learn from 1914-1924.

Professor Robert Service


The Eastern Mediterranean Programme

Dr Othon Anastasakis, Director of SEESOX and the European Studies Centre

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The Eastern Mediterranean Programme

Dr Othon Anastasakis, Director of SEESOX and the European Studies Centre

During the academic year 2023-2024, St Antony’s SEESOX (South East European Studies at Oxford) introduced a new interdisciplinary regional programme with a focus on the Eastern Mediterranean region. The Eastern Mediterranean lies at the intersection of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, intertwining Euro-Atlantic and MENA dynamics. It can be best understood in terms of the security processes that define it and have given rise to the re-popularisation of the regional label. This renders the Eastern Mediterranean important for Euro-Atlantic security and Europe’s political economy, as it is a maritime and land conduit to Europe.

The aim of the Programme is to respond to the increasing demand for policy, as well as the necessary empirical and conceptual work that must underpin policy suggestions and the programme’s pursuit to advance academic excellence in the study of the region. This will be achieved through research projects, publications, workshops, panel discussions, strategic dialogues, and outreach events. The Programme focuses on themes such as regionalism, energy security, migration, relations with the European Union, the United States’ involvement, and great power competition.

On 16-17 May 2024, the Eastern Mediterranean Programme hosted its inaugural conference at St Antony’s College which explored the above-mentioned issues, interrogating existing assumptions, the implications of regionalisation, issues of interest, perceived opportunities, and challenges. Participants included academics and practitioners from international organisations, the European Union, regional governments, think tanks, and the civil service – all foremost experts in the field. On 19 March 2024, the Programme further hosted, over a working lunch, the then High Commissioner of Cyprus, and current Permanent Secretary of the Cypriot Foreign Ministry, for an open exchange on Cyprus’ position in the region and its advancements.

The second event will take place in the Oxford University Offices in New York on 15 October 2024, to address energy and geopolitics in the region with US diplomats, practitioners, and academics and with keynote speaker Geoffrey R Pyatt (US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources).

The study of the Eastern Mediterranean region remains underdeveloped in universities around the world, rendering this an innovative programme at St Antony’s College. So far, the Programme has acquired financial support from donors, including the philanthropists Harley Lippman and Dean Dakolias, the A G Leventis Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Raycap.

Its founding team includes Othon Anastasakis (Director of SEESOX and Senior Research fellow on South East European Studies), George Hajipavli, (East Mediterranean expert and DPhil candidate on Russian and East European studies in Oxford), David Phillips, (Director of the Programme on Peace-building and Human Rights at Columbia University) and Manal Shehabi, (energy expert and Associate Faculty member in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford).

Dr Othon Anastasakis, Director of SEESOX and the European Studies Centre


Hazem Ben-Gacem Oxford-Tunisia Exchange Programme

Professor Eugene Rogan, Director, The Middle East Centre

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Hazem Ben-Gacem Oxford-Tunisia Exchange Programme

Professor Eugene Rogan, Director, The Middle East Centre

On 4 March 2024, Hazem Ben-Gacem, a member of the Middle East Centre Advisory Board, and Centre Director Eugene Rogan met with the Minister of Higher Education in Tunis for the signing of an agreement establishing the Hazem Ben-Gacem Oxford Tunisia Exchange Programme.

The Programme is the brainchild of Mr Ben-Gacem, who wanted to promote meaningful academic exchange between his native Tunisia and Oxford.  An alumnus of Harvard, Mr Ben-Gacem has funded scholarships for Tunisians to study at Harvard and has underwritten a Harvard Centre in Tunis.  Now connected to Oxford through the College and Middle East Centre, Mr Ben-Gacem makes possible an unprecedented level of exchange between Oxford and North African universities through his generous support.

Before launching the initiative, the Middle East Centre convened a committee of Oxford academics with research ties to Tunisia.  Chaired by Eugene Rogan, the committee brought together Professor Michael Willis, the King Muhammad VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies and a Fellow of St Antony’s; Professor Mohamed-Salah Omri of St John’s College, himself a Tunisian and one of the leading scholars of modern Arabic literature; and Dr Anne Wolf, a fellow of All Souls College and leading scholar of the politics of Tunisia.

Rogan, Willis and Omri travelled to Tunisia in 2023 to consult with scholars in six of Tunisia’s 13 public universities. They reported their findings to Mr Ben-Gacem and proposed a framework for both Tunisian scholars to come to Oxford, and for Oxford students and faculty to engage with Tunisian universities and research facilities. They then shared the plan with the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education to ensure it enjoyed official approval.  The British ambassador to Tunisia, H.E. Helen Winterton, gave her full support to the initiative, stewarding the Programme to the successful signing in March.

At the Ministry of Higher Education in Tunis, with the Minister in the middle

At the Ministry of Higher Education in Tunis, with the Minister in the middle

Ambassador Helen Winterton with Hazem Ben-Gacem

Ambassador Helen Winterton with Hazem Ben-Gacem

The Programme will run for an initial three-year period.  In the first year (2024-2025), the Programme provides for three doctoral candidates registered in Tunisian universities to spend one term each in Oxford.  The visiting studentships were advertised across Tunisia in the spring of 2024 and attracted a field of 69 candidates in the humanities and social sciences.  From a long list of 12, six candidates were shortlisted and interviewed.  The inaugural Hazem Ben-Gacem Visiting Doctoral Students selected from this pool have been named:

Michaelmas Term 2024: Ms Oumaima Bouaziz (Ecole Supérieur des Sciences et Technologies du Design, Manouba University), for her thesis ‘Designing Sacredness: Study of Contemporary Mosques in Tunisia’

Hilary Term 2025: Ms Donia Kaffel (Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences of Sfax), for her thesis ‘Linking Adverbials in Tunisian Academic Writing: A Corpus-Based Study of Cohesion and Conjunction Across Genres and Disciplines’

Trinity Term 2025: Mr Ayoub Majri (Institut Supérieur de Gestion, University of Tunis), for his thesis ‘Fragmented Journeys Undertaken by Sub-Saharan Migrants in Tunisia’

Each scholar will be housed in St Antony’s student accommodation and has been assigned a mentor from the relevant faculty.  The mentor will hold weekly meetings with the students, introduce them to other faculty and research students to allow the Tunisian students to develop their academic networks.  In this way, we hope that their ten-week stays will provide each doctoral candidate with significant opportunities to develop their work.

In the second year, the Programme will expand to provide visiting fellowships for three faculty members as well as three doctoral students from Tunisian universities to come to Oxford each year.

The Programme also provides funding for Oxford students and researchers to work in Tunisia.  One of the key requests of our colleagues in Tunisian universities was to have a balanced exchange, and for them to host Oxford scholars on their campuses.  Towards this end, the Programme provides a fund of £5,000 to support language training for Oxford students in Tunisia, and a separate fund of £20,000 to provide seed funds for research and exchange opportunities for Oxford faculty and scholars to engage with universities and research institutes in Tunisia.

In the summer of 2024 two scholarships of £1,000 were awarded to MPhil students to pursue language training in Tunisia in summer 2024: Ms Chiraz Hassoumi and Mr Jared Martin.

The Oxford committee will issue an invitation for proposals for research funds for the 2024-25 academic year.  They hope in this way to encourage research workshops and field work projects enabling Oxford scholars to engage with their colleagues in Tunisian universities.

As a global college dedicated to exchange with the regions we study, St Antony’s has responded to Mr Ben-Gacem’s incredible support with real enthusiasm.  We wish to record the active support of the Acting Warden Nandini Gooptu, the Bursar Tanya Baldwin, the Director of Development Wouter te Kloeze, and the Accountant Billy Garnett, who gave generously of their time and experience to ensure the Programme got off to a successful start.

Professor Eugene Rogan, Director, The Middle East Centre


The Antonian October 2024

October 2024

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The Antonian

October 2024

Letter from the Warden

Dear Antonians,

As one of my last activities as Acting Warden before Roger returns from his sabbatical leave, it is my great pleasure to write this Warden’s letter ahead of the start of the new academic year.

Plus est en vous

As you know, our college motto is Plus est en vous – ‘There is more in you’. When I addressed our new students in induction week 2023, I had mentioned our motto and also referred to the US Black Civil Rights activist Senator John Lewis, who said the following at Emory University in his commencement speech:

‘On this beautiful campus, with your great education, you must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.’

Little did I know at the time that this year would become the year of making good trouble for many of our students here at the University and that it would so aptly bring out the true meaning of our motto in so many ways. Unfortunately, the context was the Gaza War. For some of our College members, the war – on both sides – is not a distant set of events but it has affected their families and friends. Our hearts go out to them. Whether or not directly affected, many of our students have taken a courageous ethical political stand, participated in protests, raised funds and mobilised in a variety of ways. Our students have demonstrated the value of courage to do the right thing in the face of catastrophic violence and a humanitarian crisis as well as against Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and racism, and have held us to account to do so too.

I have to admit, though, it has not been smooth sailing. Among some of our students, there have been hurt, anger, tension and frustration, and also fear, loneliness and a sense of isolation. We have tried to do the best we can to provide support, sometimes getting it right and sometimes not. Personally, this unprecedented situation has taught me as nothing before to listen with compassion and to learn with humility from all sides – the vocally upset and outraged, the quietly suffering, and even the largely indifferent. We have managed to pull through this year because of the enormous goodwill and understanding of our students, the truly exemplary dedication and commitment of our staff at every level and the leadership and responsiveness of our fellows. For this, I am extremely grateful to everyone, and despite this being a difficult year by any yardstick, I have found it rewarding and a privilege to be the Acting Warden.

Amidst these difficult times, I also wanted to share with you some uplifting news and updates about the College.

DAC Scholarship

I am truly delighted and grateful to let you know that we have raised over £1 million for the endowment of the DAC Scholarship Fund for students from low- and medium-income countries, listed by the Development Assistance Committee of OECD as entitled to public development aid. This means we will be receiving a further £500,000 from the University in matched funding. All combined, we will have a DAC Scholarship endowment of £1.5 million through which we will be able to support students who did their first degree in a DAC-listed country and have won a place to study at St Antony’s, but otherwise would have been unable to take up that place because of lack of funds. I would like to express our enormous gratitude to everyone who supported the appeal. I refer to this link for further scholarship news.

I would also like to sincerely thank the donors who are supporting three new programmes at the College: the Eastern Mediterranean Programme, the Fundación Ramón Areces Spanish Visiting Fellowship at the European Studies Centre, and the Hazem Ben Gacem Tunisia Exchange Programme. ESC and MEC Directors Othon Anastasakis and Eugene Rogan report on these initiatives elsewhere in this Antonian magazine.

Our students and Fellows

Our congratulations go to the St Antony’s football team. They won the Cuppers final and emerged as the University champions. MSc student Sarah Mughal Rana published her much acclaimed and thought-provoking debut novel, Hope Ablaze, about a young Muslim Pakistani-origin woman’s struggle against racism and Islamophobia in America. DPhil student and Dahrendorf Scholar Olivier de France was shortlisted for two of his poems for the coveted Oxford poetry prize. The poems speak for the lands and ecosystems in the depleted and threatened North Oxford Green Belt. In all these too, I am reminded – plus est en vous.

Moving on from students to Fellows, many congratulations are in order. Amir Lebdoui, Rachel Murphy, Leigh Payne and Tim Vlandas have all won various grants and research awards from the Open Society Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, ESRC and the British Academy. Several fellows have written new books: Tom Hale, Dan Healey, Amir Lebdioui, Eugene Rogan and Robert Service.

It saddens me to say that we lost several good friends in the past academic year. Allan Taylor (Emeritus Fellow and former Bursar), Professor Robert Barnes (Emeritus Fellow), Professor Mark Elvin (Emeritus Fellow), Professor David Marquand (Honorary Fellow) and Lord Patrick Cormack (with Archie Brown, the founder of the Visiting Parliamentary Fellowship) passed away in recent months. Their obituaries can be read on the ‘In Memoriam’ page of our website by following this link.

We bade farewell to Governing Body Fellow Professor Takehiko Kariya who is retiring and returning to Japan. We are delighted to welcome four new Fellows in the coming year: Janaki Srinivasan (Digital South Asian Studies), Kristi Govella (Politics and International Relations of Japan), Michael Odijie (African History) and Gregory Thaler (Environmental Geography and Latin American Studies). These appointments mark exciting new associations of the College with the Oxford Internet Institute and the School of Geography and the Environment, while further strengthening our links with the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the History Faculty.

I am pleased to announce that Professor Rashid Khalidi has been elected as Honorary Fellow of St Antony’s. In the course of his distinguished career, he has exemplified everything St Antony’s stands for in terms of pursuing the very highest standard of scholarship, contributing to the policy world with the benefit of research knowledge, engagement with the critical issues in the world today, and inspiring through teaching and supervision future generations of scholars and policy makers. 

Our Visiting Parliamentary Fellowship (VPF) Programme this year focused on climate change, with GB Fellow Tom Hale leading the initiative. The two parliamentary fellows were Chris Skidmore and Alex Sobel, both of whom have led on national environmental policy initiatives. The seminars on ‘A green and pleasant land for nature, food, energy, and people‘ and ‘Moving and building: local government and the climate challenge‘ were recorded and can be found on YouTube. We hope to announce soon who will be our Visiting Parliamentary Fellows in 2024/25.

Visiting the College: High Table

As ever, it was wonderful reading all your updates and I would like to remind you that all Antonians have an allowance of one free High Table a year for life. For all the details and if you would like to join us at High Table, please follow this link.

Acting Warden, 2023-24

Share your feedback

We want to make sure the Antonian is the best it can be! If you can spare a few minutes, we’d be very grateful if you could complete a short survey about The Antonian.

With thanks to Professor Archie Brown, Emeritus Fellow, for time spent proofreading and editing this edition of The Antonian.


Scholarships at St Antony’s

St Antony’s students reflect on the transformative impact of scholarships.

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‘The importance of scholarships to students like me is incredible. I’d say it’s transformative.’

Samira Mohammed Ibn Moro, DAC Scholarship, MSc African Studies

Meet the St Antony’s students whose lives have been changed by scholarship funding.

Scholarships change lives. It’s as simple as that. We think the best people to tell you about how important scholarships are for the St Antony’s community are the ones who have directly benefited from them. In the following videos you’ll meet students from around the world. They’ll give you an insight into how scholarships have not only supported their academic journeys, but also enriched their personal and professional growth. And in some cases, how a scholarship has changed their lives completely.

‘The scholarship is an embodiment of community, what the community does and how community changes people’s lives…And so it’s really changed my perspective on how humanity should be and how collectively we can contribute to making a better world for everyone.’

Samira Mohammed Ibn Moro, DAC Scholarship, MSc African Studies

‘It’s a huge safety net that protects you from so much and allows you to focus all your time and resources on research.’

Shreetoma Biswas, Clarendon Fund and St Antony’s Warden’s Scholarship, DPhil Anthropology

‘These contributions have a ripple effect, which not only empowers the students, but also enables them to give back to the community in meaningful ways.’

– Debayan Das, DAC Scholarship, MSc Social Anthropology –

‘Scholarships not only enable people to come and study, but also they promote international integration’

– Rispah Odanga, Swire Scholarship, Bachelor of Civil Law –

‘Scholarships really help students who are passionate about something, about learning, be able to overcome financial barriers’

JR Neumeier, MPhil Russian and Eastern European Studies, Archie Brown & Alex Pravda Scholarship

‘I was going to give up my spot at Oxford just because the programme was not feasible for me financially.

– Veronica Soon, Sir John Swire-Rosemary Foot Scholarship, DPhil Law –

‘It does make a whole lot of difference in our lives and hopefully in the lives of future generations to come.’

– Joyce Dzide-Tei, ODID-DAC Scholarship, MPhil Development Studies –

Yesmine Abida, Hazem ben Gacem Scholarship, MPhil Modern Middle Eastern Studies

‘It really does change the lives of not just the person receiving it, but everyone that they are in community with’

Jocelyn Chau, Swire Scholarship, MSc Refugee and Forced Migration Studies

‘I was very excited, because I think coming to Oxford was already a dream’