Directory

My work focuses on the connections between human and physical landscapes. My past research began at Oberlin College and continues today at the University of Oxford, always supported by my extraordinary mentors. With their guidance, I examine the nexus of climate, extractive industries, and the human communities most directly affected by environmental change. In the past several years, I have studied these transformations in rural Mongolia, expanding and curtailing opportunities for nomadic herders living in the Gobi Desert. To date, my research has been published and featured in several academic and popular outlets, including The Washington Post. At Cambridge, I will be studying many of these same socioecological systems, but in the context of the Arctic. By focusing on the world’s fastest-warming region, I hope to examine the (un)natural laboratory of melting glaciers and retreating sea ice. While these changes send some communities into retreat, they also create new opportunities for developers and extractors to prospect for wealth in Earth’s last terra incognita. This new frontier offers a glimpse into a future where climate change doesn’t cause the end of the world but the beginning of a new chapter of socioecological history. I hope my research will shed light on this future to inform policy and innovation that helps vulnerable communities cope with the pressing demands of a changing climate.

Previous Education

University of Oxford Env. Change and Management 2017
Oberlin College Politics

I completed my PhD in 2012, which focused on the evolution of Islamist civil society movements in Tunisia and Morocco into pro-democracy political movements (and ended up taking a strong focus on how they responded to the Arab spring given events from 2011 onwards). While in Cambridge, I was highly involved in my college – having served as the Trinity Hall MCR President, rowing in the Women’s First VIII and serving on the committee for Trinity Hall Boat Club. Since completing my studies, I have pursued a career in applied research in international development, most recently joining the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office as a Results & Evidence Adviser focused on Sudan.

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-linn-12b86546

I am a marine conservationist with work experience in South Asia and West Africa. My PhD at Cambridge examined the ecological and socio-economic impacts of trawl fisheries along the Coromandel coast of India. My research also demonstrated the huge role that the animal feed industry (particularly the poultry industry) in India has on driving overfishing. I have had a long-standing interest in finding ways to reconcile conservation and economic development through policy and practice. My work has involved designing, supporting and implementing projects including the management of marine protected areas, setting up fisheries monitoring programmes and undertaking environment and social impact assessments.

My research focuses on ethnicity and border conflicts in Colonial Kenya. I hope to use this research not only to further our understanding of history in Africa, but also to gain insights into the current conflicts facing the continent. Special thanks to the Gates, Trinity Hall, and my family for their continued support of my research.

For my MA in History at Queen’s University, I worked on a research project which examined the ways in which British literary and governmental representations of political violence in Bengal sought to de-politicize the actions of anti-colonial revolutionaries. My PhD at Cambridge expands upon this research by examining the global scope of imperial networks of surveillance and Indian radical politics during the first half of the twentieth century. My research follows the transformation of laws of sedition into laws of 'terror' in both international and British imperial law from the beginning of the First World War until the end of the 1930s, with the intention of exploring the origins of terrorism as a legal category and a global idea.

As an undergraduate studying International Relations and Middle East Studies at Brown University, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the lives of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. I learned that my interlocutors did not consider themselves marginalized subjects. Instead, they articulated their experiences as empowered women using Buddhist practices to navigate their everyday lives. Growing up in Sri Lanka during the Civil War, I witnessed similar discrepancies between the way local populations viewed themselves and the assumptions human rights organisations made when proposing policy. Through these experiences, I came to value anthropology’s emphasis on localised ways of life as a tool for improving policy initiatives. At Cambridge, I will investigate how human rights organisations with deeply secular roots can work to protect migrant domestic workers whose primary motivations are non-secular. I seek to confront the liberal assumptions of feminist and labor theorists engaging with the lives of migrant domestic workers and to explore the imbrication of religious embodiment in post-colonial subject formation. Ultimately, I hope to amplify the voices of women caught between the difficult experiences of migration and the problems of representation in secular human rights discourse. I am excited to work with the Gates and Cambridge communities to develop a deeper public consciousness about the role of religion as a mode of empowerment.

Previous Education

Brown University

I am extremely thankful to the Gates Cambridge Trust for awarding the scholarship to me, acknowledging my scientific and social work that I have done in the past. This scholarship has led me not only to a degree from a world class university such as Cambridge and MIT, but also has exposed me to a diverse academic and social culture of the highest order from all over the world. I take this scholarship as a responsibility to contribute to my best abilities to the development of the world.

I grew up and obtained my BSc in Molecular Bioscience in Austria, a country where education is free. Realising the privilege of that, I am a strong advocate for just access to and distribution of resources, including the research produced in world-leading institutions such as Cambridge University. I want to use the opportunities that have been given to me to the benefit of other people. During my master’s degree in Systems Biology at the University of Heidelberg, I found in infectious disease research a scientific field which allows me to do that. In my PhD, I will use a computational model of the humoral immune response to investigate how prior and novel immunity interact upon exposure to evolving pathogens to improve vaccination strategies against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza. The past years demonstrated vaccines as the most potent tool for virus disease management, but more so that global crises cannot be thought in isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic took a disproportionate toll on the Global South, low-income households, and women, reinforcing traditional gender roles and thereby the dual burden of women. With my PhD work I aim to contribute to alleviating this toll.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Biological Sciences 2022
University of Heidelberg Molecular Biosciences 2021
Universitat Wien Bioinformatics 2018

My research topic at Cambridge is on the aerodynamics involved in the flight of dragonflies. Specifically, I will be studying the fluid structural formations and interactions which lead to the high lift performance of dragonfly wings. This, however, would have been impossible without the necessary support, so many thanks to the Trust!

Freedom is free of the need to be free

This taught MPhil program covers the latest advances in biological and medical science, together with business management and the ethical, legal and regulatory issues associated with bringing scientific advances to market.

My thesis examines Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of human rights philosophy and practice. Contrary to the ‘wholesale scepticism’ often attributed to MacIntyre, it is my view that a thorough engagement with his work points to a persuasive, alternative understanding of human rights based on a recovery of Aristotelian teleology that confronts the question of what constitutes a good human life. I will then challenge conventional interpretations of MacIntyre as a wholesale human rights sceptic by exploring the intellectual resources his moral philosophy offers for explaining the genesis and meaning of human rights. I am hoping to use my research to pursue a career in human rights advocacy and academic scholarship.