New Research Fellows
The college is pleased to welcome eleven new Research Fellows elected by Governing Body following a recent competition. They join Green Templeton’s 300-strong fellowship including from across its core disciplines of management studies, medical and life sciences and social sciences.
New Research Fellows
Dr Verena Hinze
Dr Verena Hinze is a Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. Her research explores the connection between physical and mental health, with a particular focus on young people. She is especially interested in understanding the link between chronic pain and severe distress, including the risk of self-harm.
She collaborates closely with pain management services to ensure that her research addresses the real-life needs of adolescents with chronic pain, their families, and healthcare providers. Beyond her research, Verena serves on the People & Culture Committee and co-chairs the Academic Career Development Working Group in the Department of Psychiatry.
Dr Hilary Hoyt
Dr Hilary Hoyt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation, University of Oxford. In her inductive research, she explores problems in organisational life through the eyes of participants, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to access their lived experiences. Much of her work lies at the intersection of workplace relationships and organisational change.
She is working to better understand how people collaborate to provide end-of-life care for the chronically unhoused. Hilary received her PhD from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where she studied relational dynamics in three companies undergoing rapid growth.
Dr Claire Keene
Dr Claire Keene is a health systems researcher and the Deputy Director of the MSc in Health Service Improvement and Evaluation, under the Nuffield Department of Medicine’s Centre for Global Health Research. She brings a diverse background to her research: working as a medical doctor, conducting clinical trials and operational research, and leading a large HIV and tuberculosis project for Médecins Sans Frontières.
Claire currently works as part of the Health Systems Collaborative in Oxford. Her research explores people’s engagement with HIV care, predominantly in a South African public sector context. She is particularly interested in applying precision public health concepts to making service delivery more efficient and responsive to people’s needs.
Dr Amedeo Minichino
Dr Amedeo Minichino is a consultant psychiatrist and a Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. Amedeo’s research focuses on how the gut microbiome influences the effectiveness and tolerability of psychotropic medication, taking an interdisciplinary approach, combining clinical studies, in vitro experiments, and animal models.
Amedeo collaborates widely across psychiatry, neuroscience, immunology, gastroenterology, and data science. Clinically, Amedeo I leads OPEN – the Oxford Preventive and Early interventioN service – an NHS service dedicated to identifying and supporting young people at risk of developing severe mental illnesses, including psychosis, depression, and bipolar disorder.
Dr Mahima Mitra
Dr Mahima Mitra is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Mahima’s research focuses on the interactions occurring at the micro-macro interface in organisations, and how these impact a professional’s sense of self. Her current work examines individuals’ socio-emotional experience at work, particularly in relation to career transitions, as well as the role of organisations in shaping leader identities.
Mahima also studies Equality, Diversity and Inclusion from an individual, organisational culture, and leadership perspective. She uses in-depth qualitative methodologies, such as, narrative interviews, diary studies and visual methods to examine individual experiences in organisational contexts.
Dr Darragh O’Brien
Dr Darragh O’Brien is Group Leader in Translational Proteomics at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford. In this role he utilises biological mass spectrometry approaches to characterise and decipher mechanisms of human disease.
His interests lie in how protein structural disorder and modification contribute to protein function and disease. His research focuses on neurodegeneration and dementia, specifically the tauopathies Alzheimer’s Disease and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.
Dr Keren Papier
Dr Keren Papier a Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH) Fellow, University of Oxford, and a Senior Nutritional Epidemiologist. Her research investigates the impact of diet and nutritional status on health, particularly gastro-intestinal and metabolic health, and cancer.
Based at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at NDPH, Keren leads a programme of research on the long-term health impacts of plant-based diets. She is the Principal Investigator for the Feeding the Future Study (FEED), and is a Co-Investigator on the MRC funded Longitudinal Population Study grant ‘EPIC-Oxford: Benefits and risks of plant-based diets’.
Dr Laurence Roope
Dr Laurence Roope is a Senior Researcher at the Health Economics Research Centre (HERC), part of the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. His research spans development and health economics, with a particular focus on developing and applying innovative measures of inequality, poverty and societal wellbeing to inform public policy.
Laurence also uses economic analysis to address major global challenges, including antimicrobial resistance, pandemics and environmental sustainability. He hopes to engage with other college members on topics related to his broad research interests in inequality, sustainability, and global health and development.
Dr Bridget Steele
Dr Bridget Steele is a Lecturer in Evidence Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. She is a social epidemiologist focused on understanding the causes of gender-based violence and its impact on survivor health and wellbeing.
Through her research, Bridget aims to inform the design and evaluation of prevention interventions and policies. She is a mixed methods researcher who takes a survivor centred approach to her work. She has expertise in systematic review and meta-analysis methodologies, survey and measurement design, and participatory research.
Professor James Sheppard
Professor James Sheppard is a Professor of Applied Health Research at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. His research focusses on better understanding the benefits and harms of commonly prescribed treatments using large scale routine electronic health record data, with a particular emphasis on medications used for cardiovascular disease prevention.
James’ work involves systematic reviews, statistical modelling, causal inference epidemiology and primary care based clinical trials, including the recent OPTIMISE and OPTIMISE2 trials of antihypertensive deprescribing. James was previously a Research Associate at college.
Dr Lisa Hinton has also joined.
