Directory

I am interested in how political ideas play out in past and present. As an MPhil student in the interdisciplinary program in Political Thought and Intellectual History, I hope to explore the contexts in which particular political philosophies unfolded as well as the ways in which those philosophies influenced history by empowering people to act. As an intern on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, I saw firsthand how framing ideas in new ways can lead to a more informed and engaged citizenry. I ultimately hope to use these academic and policy experiences to serve as a communicator between policymakers and citizens, using the power of narrative and my background as both a historian and creative writer to close the gap between individuals and their government.

Previous Education

Princeton University

Before studying migration history at Cambridge, I served for almost five years as a judge in the administrative branch of the French judiciary. I specialized in immigration and asylum cases, a field I had previously discovered as a volunteer in French NGOs providing help to asylum seekers. In addition, I have also worked as a speechwriter for the President of the French Republic, as a member of the editorial board of an international affairs newsmagazine, and as an adjunct lecturer at Sciences-Po, ENS and other French universities.

After completing my Ph.D. at Cambridge (2019), I joined a Paris research lab called the Centre d'histoire sociale des mondes contemporains (University of Paris 1/CNRS) as an associate researcher. I was then a visiting researcher and Fung global fellow at Princeton University (2020-2021), before joining the University of Oxford in 2021 as a Leverhulme Early Career fellow at the Faculty of History and a William Golding JRF at Brasenose colllege. I am also a fellow at the Institut Convergences Migrations (Paris) and at the Global Public Policy Institute (Berlin).

My publications include a monograph, published in English as Neighbours of Passage: A Microhistory of Migrants in a Paris Tenement, 1882-1932 (Routledge, 2022), and in French as Voisins de passage. Une microhistoire des migrations (La Découverte, 2023).

I'm studying eighteenth-century British novels.

I was born and raised in Chile. There I studied mostly economics, but also quite a bit of sociology, and philosophy. I worked then as a researcher in policy-relevant areas of economics (at J-PAL) both in Chile and in India, and I also taught philosophy of science and economics in Chile. I decided to bring those interests closer together by studying philosophy of the social sciences at the LSE. I look forward now to continue doing so in my Ph.D. at Cambridge HPS. My goal is to develop rigorous philosophical analyses of the theoretical and normative aspects of science, with a special focus on the social sciences. I expect this research to inform not only internal debates in philosophy of science, but also in economics, and in the interdisciplinary debates that surround public policy disputes.

Previous Education

University of Colorado at Boulder Philosophy 2022
London School of Economics & Political Science (Un Philosophy of the Social Scien 2016
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (Catholic Economics 2011

My research examines how multi-sensory encounters with landscapes shape people’s perceptions of heritage, belonging, and social difference. As a member of the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast (CLIC) Project since 2007, I have undertaken archaeological and ethnographic research on the islands of Inishark and Inishbofin, Co. Galway, on topics ranging from early medieval monasticism and pilgrimage traditions, pastoralism, heritage tourism, and sustainability. Myself and colleagues have published research results in Antiquity, Medieval Archaeology, The Journal of Social Archaeology, and the Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Notre Dame, I am working with Dr. Ian Kuijt on the book project Faith Along the Water, which traces the expansion and development of monastic settlements across the seascape of Connemara c. 650-1300 CE.

Previous Education

University of Notre Dame

Cambridge! What an opportunity to pass my PhD at this university, where so many great physicists have left their footprints. And since biotechnology, cancer-, and stem cell research are present almost everywhere in Cambridge, this is a near perfect environment to study such an interdisciplinary field as biophysics. Therefore, I investigated the mechanical properties of stem cells by stretching them with the help of laser light. I am now in my 4th year in Cambridge and about to write down all the research I have done during this exciting time.

Previous Education

University of Leipzig

Links

http://www.leibniz-inm.de/en/research/bio-interfaces/cytoskeletal-fibers
http://www.lautenschlaeger.uni-saarland.de

I was raised near Birmingham, Alabama, where I first grasped at the mystery of human experience and the beauty of devotion to a higher cause. I spent four meaningful years at The University of Mississippi, earning a BA in Religious Studies with minors in Biology and Chemistry. My undergraduate research exploring the gendered world of ancient medicine was published by the Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa, and my senior thesis utilized a case study analysis to demonstrate the impact of western masculinity upon historical Jesus studies. Since my graduation from University, I have been teaching science in middle schools and caretaking for individuals with disabilities. As I undertake an MPhil in Health, Medicine, and Society at Cambridge, I hope to deepen my understanding of health systems in order to prepare myself for a career in public health advocacy. I am honored to join the Gates Cambridge community and look forward to a lifetime of listening and learning that might improve the lives of others.

Previous Education

University of Mississippi B.A. in Religious Studies 2018

I was raised in Malaysian Borneo, a linguistically heterogeneous environment that exposed me to a plethora of linguistic phenomena. I sought explanations by exploring different facets of language research at UCL, Harvard University, New York University, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Throughout my education and research, I immersed myself in the psychology, philosophy, development, and neuroscience of language. My PhD seeks to expand our understanding on the neural bases of meaning composition, our striking capacity to combine simple concepts into more complex ones. A substantial focus of this work would be to better understand this capacity in relatively natural contexts, such as audiobook listening. Such tasks are particularly suitable for certain populations such as children on the autism spectrum or individuals with acquired brain injury, for whom standard experimental tasks might not be appropriate. I am privileged to have mentors who continue to inspire, encourage, and support me in my academic pursuit. I am committed to promoting access to and belongingness in higher education and academia. I am keen on building capacity in this space within the Gates Community and beyond.

Previous Education

Radboud University Nijmegen Cognitive Neuroscience 2022
University College London Linguistics 2018

I developed an interest in archaeology as an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin. After I withdrew from my former career as a ballet dancer, my passion to create physical expressions of myself found satisfaction in uncovering the memories of selves expressed in the physical objects they left behind.As an archaeologist, I am interested in the everyday experiences of Bronze Age people in northern Europe. In my career, I plan to explore their personal and community identities, settlements and households, social organizations, engagements with material culture, and ideologies of gender and sexuality.My PhD research examines human conceptualizations of non-human animals through the Bronze Age rock carvings from southern Scandinavia. Some of the broader questions I hope to answer include whether animals were viewed as having agency in the past, how animals fit within the networks of Bronze Age society, how people were perceived as being similar to and different from animals, whether some animals were special kind of beings, and what the implications of my research are for human-animal interactions and relationships in practice in Bronze Age Sweden. Ideally, my project will provide a foundation for further works thinking about society in practice through prehistoric art, and about the roles of animals in prehistory.I am thrilled for the opportunity to share my passion for archaeology with academic and public audiences as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and to continue my graduate education at the University of Cambridge. I hope to inspire in others an appreciation for the beautiful diversity of humanity throughout the millennia. I am honored to also be a 2013 Beinecke Scholar.

Previous Education

University of Wisconsin Madison
University of Cambridge

I grew up enjoying the outdoors in my Utah rodeo hometown, which led to pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science at Antioch College in Ohio. Through research experience in water and soil quality across the U.S.A. and in Ghana, I became interested in the intersection between policy and science internationally. As a result, I obtained an emphasis with my BSc in the Spanish language and worked for the U.S. Department of State in Bolivia, Washington D.C., and Sri Lanka. During my PhD in Public Health, I seek to better understand the environmental determination of arsenic and heavy metals in cardiovascular disease risk. In a team of international collaborators, I will characterize toxic element exposure in Bangladesh and Malaysia as well as investigate the association between these exposures and cardiovascular disease. I am honored to participate in the Gates Cambridge Program and be among peers with a similar passion for utilizing academic research to protect Earth’s health and the well-being of all.

Previous Education

Antioch College

An immersive homestay in Seville in June 2010 catalyzed a passion for further study of the languages, cultures and histories of Spain. As an undergraduate at Centre College, I balanced learned classroom knowledge with practical lived experiences in my community. I co-directed an afterschool program for second language learners, worked at a civic technology company in New York and continued to pursue opportunities to study abroad. Living with Catalan-speaking roommates during my semester at the University of Lleida illuminated many of the ongoing tensions surrounding the Spanish Civil War and thirty-six year Franco dictatorship. What I discovered in Catalonia was affirmed during my year as a Fulbright ETA in Madrid: pedagogical practice itself is contested territory. The material included and excluded, highlighted and hidden, in textbooks and teaching manuals has significant influence on the ways in which Spanish students remember their country’s violent past. My experiences in Spain animate my PhD dissertation, which is a cultural studies project that examines the politics and policies of pedagogical practice from 1898 to the present. By analyzing what and how students are taught, we can understand better the complex nature of contemporary Spanish politics. Following my PhD, I will pursue a career in higher education that prioritizes student experience and will aim to facilitate the types of experiential learning that have proven so meaningful to me.

Previous Education

Centre College
University of Cambridge

I am looking forward to the adventure at Cambridge. My career goal changes a bit every now and then, but I hope this experience will be a great start for whatever future direction I may decide to pursue.

I graduated in Classics at the Sorbonne and was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure where I studied Philosophy. I completed a Masters degree in Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne and a European Masters degree in Philosophy which led me to Toulouse, Louvain-la-Neuve, Munich and Tokyo. I also trained as an actress, a classical singer and a lighting designer. For my PhD I will focus on opera lighting. The different ways lighting has been used – or not used – in scenic productions reveals much about the kind of being-together we want to create amongst the audience and by extension the kind of society we are hoping to build. My ultimate goal is to stage productions that would help audiences to develop a creative life within a democratic society.

Previous Education

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Philosophy 2011
Université Paris Sorbonne- Paris IV, France Comparative Literature 2010
Ecole Normale Superieure Philosophy 2007

My doctoral research considered the aesthetic and ethical implications of literary minimalism in twentieth-century writing, particularly Gertrude Stein's prose-poetry and the abstract late work of Samuel Beckett. My general research interests include American literature (1850s to the present), philosophy, intellectual history, and the environmental humanities. I am currently a postdoctoral Research Fellow in English at Keble College, University of Oxford.

Most have a favourite colour, I have a favourite cell. Macrophages are tissue-resident immune cells that are the ‘first ones in and last ones out’ in most tissue insults. This crush started in 2018, while investigating a rare immune disorder where chronic EBV infection drove uncontrolled macrophage activation, corrupting our biggest ally into a fatal enemy. I went on to study these cells in other contexts, including pregnancy, where placental macrophages have a plethora of roles essential for fetal health. By the midpoint of my medical studies at Cambridge University, I was committed to dedicating more time to immunology research, which has the potential to transform all fields of medicine. For my PhD, I bring my interests in tissue-resident immunity to triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). TNBC is the most aggressive form of breast cancer and the lack of effective therapies in TNBC is a major unmet clinical need. By combining computational methods with functional disease models, I hope to derive translatable insights to antibody and macrophage-directed responses within tumours, which may yield novel therapeutic strategies in TNBC. Outside of the lab, I am passionate about sports, education outreach and medical education.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Medicine 2020

A summary of my path can be found in a featured interview with the Gates Cambridge Trust: https://www.gatescambridge.org/about/news/the-road-to-better-policymaking/