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The IAS Associate Fellowship is a broad based community of Durham colleagues from across the disciplinary spectrum who are engaging with the IAS in forthcoming or recently completed interdisciplinary projects. The Fellowship is intended to provide a network for Fellows to come together and share ideas and experience.

Below are the current Fellows, with details of some of their research interests. 

Associate Fellow  Department/School   Research Interests 

Dr Kavi Abraham

Government and International Affairs

  • Pragmatism
  • Race
  • Global Governance
  • Postcolonial Theory
  • Democracy
  • IR Theory

Professor Ben Alderson Day

Psychology

  • Felt presence
  • Inner speech and mental imagery
  • Language and executive function
  • Psychosis and voice-hearing
  • Autism and neurodiversity
Dr Noura Al Moubayed Computer Science
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Machine Learning for Healthcare
  • Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning
  • Social Robotics
  • Brain Computer Interfaces
  • Evolutionary Computation

 

Dr Emil Knall Archambault

 

Government and International Affairs
  • International security; war studies; remote warfare; military drones; Carl Schmitt; Visual Investigations; Democracy and War
Dr Christopher Bahl History 
  • Arabic in South Asia
  • Social and cultural histories of the Indian Ocean region
  • Early Modern manuscript cultures
  • Political histories
  • Shrine cities

 

Professor Andrew Baldwin

 

Geography
  • Climate change and human migration
  • Mobility and the Anthropocene
  • Settler colonialism.
Dr Mauro Bambi Economics
  • Macroeconomic Theory
  • Endogenous Growth and Endogenous Fluctuations
  • Habit Formation
  • Behavioural Economics (Reference Dependent Preferences)
Professor Rob Barton Anthropology
  • Behavioural ecology and sociobiology
  • Evolution of mamalian reproductive traits
  • Primate evolution and behaviour
  • Brain evolution
  • Cognitive evolution
Professor Robert Baxter Biosciences 
  • Pollution ecology
  • Arctic plant ecologyarctic
  • Climate change
Dr Eamonn Bell Computer Science
  • Digital musicology
  • Media history
  • Digital humanities
  • History of technology
Dr Carly Beckerman Government and International Affairs
  • Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA)
  • Conflict Resolution/Third Party Mediation
  • Political Psychology and IR
  • Israel-Palestine
  • British Empire in the Middle East
  • American foreign policy in the Middle East

Dr Nelly Bencomo

Computer Science
  • Decision making under uncertainty
  • Autonomous systems
  • Runtime models
  • AI/ML
  • Software Engineering
  • Software Engineering for Autonomous and Self-adaptive Systems
  • Software Engineering for AI/ML Systems

Dr Marco Bernini

English Studies
  • Narrative Theory
  • Cognitive Narratology
  • Samuel Beckett
  • Immersion, Reading and Storyworlds
  • Narrative, Self and Consciousness
  • Narrative, Emergence and Complexity

 

Dr Kim Bouwer

 

Law
  • Climate Change
  • Environmental Law
  • Private Law (Predominantly torts)
Professor Susanne Braun Management and Marketing
  • Leader and follower identity dynamics
  • Narcissism in leadership
  • Authentic leadership
Professor Gavin Bridge  Geography 
  • Economy & Culture
  • Energy Policy Group
  • Geographies of Life
  • Politics - State - Space (PSS)
Dr Venetia Bridges  English 
  • Transformations of classical texts and narratives.
Professor Hannah Brown Anthropology
  • Community-Based Health Care
  • East Africa, Kenya
  • Epidemics (especially HIV/AIDS and VHFs)
  • Global Health and Development
  • Health Governance
  • Hospitals
  • Human animal relations
  • Science
  • West Africa, Sierra Leone
  • Work and Management
Professor Andy Byford Modern Languages and Cultures
  • History of knowledge and science in Russia, especially biological, human and social sciences
  • History of the intelligentsia, professions, academia and education in Russia
  • Human-animal relations in Russia

 

Dr Miro Cafolla

 

Physics

  • Solid-liquid interfaces
  • Nanoscale Electromagnetism
  • Biophysics and biomedicine
Dr Laura Campbell MLAC
  • Medieval French literature
  • Medieval Italian literature
Dr Alex Campolo Geography
  • History of statistics and data
  • Machine learning and algorithms
  • Social theory

 

Dr Simona Capsani

 

Philosophy
  • Climate Justice
  • Climate Mobility
  • Environmental Philosophy
  • Ethics (Normative & Applied)
  • Feminist Philosophy
  • Philosophy of Immigration
  • Political and Social Philosophy
Dr Nikita Chiu Marketing and Management
  • Dynamics between technological advances and governance
Dr David Chivers Economics
  • Macroeconomics of Labour Markets
  • Macroeconomics of Growth and Development
Professor Zanna Clay Psychology
  • Primate behaviour, and conservation
  • Comparative Affective Science
  • Social cognition
  • Evolution of language and culture
  • Evolution and development of empathy

 

Waylon Cunningham

 

Journalist
  • Journalism
Professor Olga Demetriou  Government and International Affairs 
  • Refugees and Displacement
  • European Asylum System
  • Gender, feminism and peace building
  • Cultural heritage conflicts
  • Citizenship
  • Minorities
Dr Can Eken Law
  • Alternative dispute resolution methods
  • Commercial mediation
  • International commercial arbitration
  • Investment law
  • Online dispute resolution
  • Third-party funding
Professor Tuomas Eerola  Music
  • Music and emotions
  • Music perception, particularly melody, rhythm and timbre
  • Music and movement
Dr Eric Egan  Music
  • Contemporary art music
  • Composition
  • Expressing environments through music
  • Societal engagement through abstract sonic structures
  • Exploring historical narratives through sound
Professor Helen Fenwick Durham Law School
  • Counter-terrorist law and policy
  • Media freedom of expression (in particular contempt law, obscenity law and privacy law)
  • Public protest
  • Human Rights Act; proposals for a Bill of Rights

Dr Alice Finden

Government and International Affairs

  • Critical terrorism studies
  • Feminist and queer theories
  • Qualitative methods including archival and interviews
  • Post-colonial theory
  • Colonialism and empire
  • Violence and its normalisation

 

Rosa Furneaux

 

Sir Harry Evans Global Fellow in Investigative Journalism  

  • Investigative journalism

Dr Sol Gamsu

Sociology

  • Regional and local geographies of education and how these combine with race, class and gender
  • Elite education
  • Secondary schooling, post-16 education and lifelong learning
  • Access to higher education
  • Politics of higher education
  • History of education
Professor John Paul Gosling Mathematical Sciences
  • Bayesian statistics
  • Expert knowledge elicitation
  • Robust analyses
Professor Chris Greenwell Earth Sciences
  • Climate and Environmental Change
  • Geochemistry Research Group
  • Geoenergy, Resources and Waste
  • Sedimentology Research Group
Professor Mariann Hardey   Marketing and Management
  • Women in digital leadership roles
  • Consumer-generated-content (CGC)
  • Tech Cities

Dr Patrick Jachyra

Sport & Exercise Sciences
  • Neurodevelopmental disabilities
  • Autism
  • Physical Activity
  • Mental Health
  • Bioethics
Professor Simon James  English Studies 
  • Victorian and Twentieth-Century Fiction
  • Literature and Gender
  • Literary Theory, esp. Narrative Theory, Psychoanalysis and Gender; Theories of Pleasure
  • Textual editing, including digital editing
Dr Kimberley Jamie Sociology
  • Health, including Family health
  • Medicines use
  • Health technologies
  • Lay health understandings/behaviours
  • Healthcare work and professional practice

 

Professor Karen Johnson

 

Engineering
  • Waste Water Treatment
  • Soils using Clean Waste
Dr Henry Jones Law
  • Critical Legal Theory
  • International Law
  • Legal History
  • Marxist Legal Theory
Dr Jeremy Kendal Anthropology
  • Social transmission and population dynamics
Dr Hannah King Sociology
  • Communities and Social Justice
  • Criminal Justice, Social Harm and Inequalities
  • Violence and Abuse
Professor Elisabeth Kirtsoglou Anthropology
  • Gender
  • Identity
  • Greece
  • Politics
  • Migration and Refugee Issues

 

Dr Kate Leslie

 

Chemistry
  • Polymer sensing arrays for monitoring chronic infections
Dr Liam Liburd History
  • Black British history
  • History of 'race' & racism in modern Britain
  • History of the British white supremacist movement
  • The legacies of empire & decolonisation
Professor Jonathan Long Modern Languages and Cultures
  • Twentieth-century German literature
  • Writers and photography
  • Literary theory
  • Theory of photography and visual culture
  • Photography in the Weimar Republic
Dr Thembi Luckett Geography
  • Social Theory
  • Labour Sociology
  • Feminist Theory
  • Political Ecology
Professor William Lucy Durham Law School
  • Legal philosophy
  • Philosophy of private law
  • The normative standing of access to justice
  • Adjudication and legal reasoning
Dr Alpár Mészáros Mathematical Sciences
  • Calculus of variations
  • Nonlinear PDEs
  • Optimal mass transport
  • Mean field games

 

Professor Petra Minnerop

 

Law
  • Citizenship Rights in International and EU Law
  • Human Rights Law
  • International Environmental Law
  • International Law on Climate Change
  • Intersection of Science and Climate Law and Policy
  • Public International Law
  •  

 

Professor Catherine Montgomery

 

Education
  • Mobilities and immobilities in international higher education
  • The internationalisation of curriculum and knowledge
Dr Karolina W. Nieberle Psychology
  • Leader and follower identity dynamics
  • Followership
  • Shared leadership
  • Employee voice behaviour

Professor Claudia Nitschke

Modern Languages and Cultures
  • Environmental Humanities
  • Literature and the law (in particular theories of property and human rights)
  • Utopian theory and fiction
  • National identity, nationalism, concepts of sovereignty in literature and film
  • Contemporary literature
  • 18th- and 19th-century literature, in particular Realism, Romanticism, 'Age of Goethe', Enlightenment
Professor James Osborn Physics 
  • Atmospheric physics
  • Free-space optical communications
  • Astronomical instrumentation

 

Dr Joy Paterson

 

Biosciences  
Dr David Petts Archaeology
  • Early medieval Britain, particularly northern England and Scotland
  • Early medieval Brittany, Normandy and the wider Atlantic world
  • Early medieval Christianity
  • Early medieval to contemporary maritime cultural landscapes
  • Post-medieval religion, ritual and belief
  • 20th century archaeology
Professor Markian Prokopovych History
  • The Habsburg Empire
  • Ukraine
  • Eastern and Central Europe
  • Cultural history
  • Urban history
Dr Rille Raaper Education 
  • Student experience, identity and agency
  • Higher education policy and practice
  • Politics of higher education and student movements
  • Consumerism in higher education
  • Critical theory and critical discourse analysis
Professor Debbie Riby  Psychology 
  • Neurodiversity
  • Neurodevelopmental conditions
  • Social perception and social cognition in Williams syndrome (WS) and Autism (ASD)
Dr Helen Roche History
  • German history from the nineteenth century onwards; 
  • Austrian history during the inter-war period; comparative fascism studies
  • History of childhood and history of education
  • Youth exchange during the twentieth century.

 

Dr Matt Sjoberg

 

Management and Marketing

 
Dr Margarita Staykova Physics
  • Biophysics
  • Biological membranes
  • Functional interfaces
  • Living materials
Professor Philip Steinberg Geography
  • Political geography
  • Governance of frontiers
  • Ocean ontologies
  • Ways of knowing in icy environments
  • Art-Geography-Law interfaces
  • Transdisciplinary pedagogies
Professor Julie-Marie Strange History
  • Class, Emotion, Material Culture, Gender and Sexuality, Animals/ Dogs
  • Victorians

 

Dr Christopher Szabla

 

Durham Law School
  • International Law
  • International Legal History
  • Global Legal History
  • Migration and Refugees
  • Law of Armed Conflict

Dr Edmund Thomas

Classics and Ancient History 
  • Roman Architecture
  • Monumentality
  • Roman Epigraphy
  • Ancient Aesthetics
  • Roman Sarcophagi
  • Classicism
  • Vitruvius
  • Light in Architecture
  • Spirally fluted columns

 

Dr Emily Tupper

 

Sport & Exercise Sciences

 

  • Movement Volunteering

Professor Tammi Walker

Psychology
  • Mental health and physical health inequalities
  • Addictions - Drugs and Alcohol Services in Education and NHS
  • Women in contact with the criminal justice system
  • Addressing sexual violence at universities
  • Prisoner self-harm and suicide

Professor Martin Ward

Physics
  • Black Holes
  • Quasars

Dr Emily Webster

Philosophy
  • Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Imperialism
  • Digital Humanities
  • Environmental History
  • Environmental Humanities
  • History and Philosophy of Epidemiology
  • History and Philosophy of Medicine
  • Medical Humanities
  • Public Health, History of Public Health

Professor John Williams

Government and International Affairs
  • International Relations theory
  • Drones, automatic and autonomous weapons
  • Ethics in International Relations
  • Ethics of territorial borders
  • Ethics of violence

Professor Justin Willis

History
  • Sudan in the 19th and 20th centuries
  • electoral history
  • modern East Africa
  • saving and money in Africa
Dr Xiaotong (Janey) Zheng Marketing and Management
  • Relational leadership
  • Trust and felt trust
  • LMX
  • Identity
  • Emotion
Professor Binghan Zheng Modern Languages and Cultures
  • Translation Process Research
  • Empirical Translation/Interpreting Studies
  • Cognitive Neuroscience of Translation
  • Contemporary Translation Theories
  • Comparative Translation/Interpreting Studies