Directory

Previous Education

University of Cambridge MPhil in Educational Research 2007
University of Connecticut MA Education 2004
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem BA Education & General Studies 1999

I’m a PhD student at Cambridge University specialising in techno-utopias within the Anthropocene. I investigate whether the emergence of techno-futuristic projects to colonise outer space, erect cryptodemocracies, and build seasteads on the ocean, leave a dent on international law and destabilise its philosophical foundations, or innovate it to be emancipatory. I am keen to know how 'futuristic' scales -- the oceanic, the virtual, the planetary -- stretch the sociolegal limits of the earth, and complicate the subjecthood of the mortal humans within it. Prior to my PhD, I have had the privilege of generating value across a range of policy spheres within Southeast Asia for 6 years. As technical aide to the Finance Minister, I led economic diplomacy missions to Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Vietnam, Singapore, New York, and Washington DC, as staff-level Head of Delegation (HoD). In the same stint, I held the international finance portfolio (IMF-WB, ADB, AIIB) and established strong linkages between the Philippines and multilateral institutions like the IMF-World Bank, ADB, and AIIB. I also authored white papers on development policy, specifically on tax, climate finance, and macroeconomic strategy. More recently, I spearheaded an all-Millennial, multidisciplinary task force to revamp the Philippines' Climate Change governance strategy. My team and I co-produce a climate future that is inclusive, just, and fit for the next generations. This work earned me a nomination to be the youngest Technical Expert on the National Panel of Technical Experts for climate change in the country, a nomination I declined due to conflicts of interest and scheduling.I'm open to collaborations in any of these fields, as well as to mentoring younger Filipinos who wish to access Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Anthropocene Studies 2021
London School of Economics & Political Science International Political Economy 2019

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-dl-tan-1b8290191

For much of my life, my endeavours have been fuelled by a love of learning. Thus, as an undergraduate, I frequently pursued courses and research experiences that went beyond my primary field of Biological Sciences, allowing me to gain knowledge in a diverse range of disciplines. My experiences left me with a deep appreciation of how different disciplines can complement one another in an intricate heterosis of knowledge, and it is my wish that future generations would also be able to experience the same joy in learning that I have known all my life. As such, in my pursuit of a PhD in Psychology, I hope to contribute to intervention techniques to help children for whom learning might not come easily. I believe targeting developmental language disorder and dyslexia would be a wonderful start in encouraging learning, as it is often our ability to comprehend language that allows us to understand new concepts in the first place.

Previous Education

Nanyang Technological University Biological Sciences 2020

I’m a PhD student in the history of political thought in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. I have interests in the co-development of ideas about democracy and modern empire, the politics of theorising race and racism, and the disciplinary history of political science.

My doctoral dissertation examines contests over the meaning and significance of race among British and American progressives at the turn of the twentieth century. It investigates how debates on the relationship between democracy and empire in Britain produced new and innovative critiques of white racial supremacy, including claims about race as a psychological force and corrupting ‘belief’.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Intellectual History 2020
University of Oxford History and Politics 2019

Links

https://www.polis.cam.ac.uk/staff/benjamin-r-y-tan
https://benjamin-tan.com

My research focuses on the role of stories and storytelling to identity-formation within contexts of postcolonial migration. Growing up in Australia, in an Indian and Malaysian family, and now, studying in the UK, I have always been interested in how people, ideas, and stories travel through former imperial circuits. I am hoping to investigate how stories inform and construct identities, how stories are entangled with legacies of empire, and how various communities use stories to disrupt existing narratives of migration or colonialism. Through creative research methods such as food ethnography and music elicitation, I am specifically interested in forms of culinary and sonic storytelling.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Sociology 2021
Sciences PO, Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris Middle Eastern Studies 2020

My ultimate career goal is to become a leading researcher in the development and use of geographic information technologies, as applied to the environmental and social sciences. Having spent my childhood in Papua New Guinea, I have always been fascinated with nature and my unique life experiences have strongly connected me to social needs. I believe that environmental problems are highly complex and require a multidisciplinary approach to solve them. By pursuing my proposed studies at the University of Cambridge, I hope to gain the technical expertise and practical experience needed to specialize in the application of such technologies in a socioeconomic and public health context. Following my PhD studies, I hope to continue in academia and to teach students, while participating in consultancy work in developing countries. By pursuing these interests, I hope to make a valuable contribution to the related areas of environmental protection, conservation, and sustainable development.

I am honoured to be part of the Gates community and to be given the opportunity to pursue my further studies here at Cambridge. I will be returning to Singapore to work in the prison service upon graduation and hope to use the knowledge gained in my course to improve the offender rehabilitation programmes in the prisons back home.

I grew up in Florianópolis, southern Brazil, where I graduated as a psychologist at UFSC. I moved to Rio de Janeiro for a master's degree in Sociology and Anthropology at UFRJ, shifting my focus to the impact of illegal gold mining on Indigenous Territory. Since 2020 I lived in northern amazon combining humanitarian action with field research. I have been working for UN Agencies and indigenous organisations and I've witnessed a great deal of extreme violence on the region; strikingly, most of it resulted from good intentions combined with anthropological ignorance. During my master's, I researched the topic of indigenous suicide focusing on ethnological concept of the amerindian body. The northern Amazonian region has faced an ongoing political transformation: from highly segregated and autonomous political villages to highly associated interethnic organisations. Today new indigenous political forms of action and creative institutions in situations of contested sovereignty arise as responses to predatory extractivism such as ilegal mining, paramilitary forces and State control.Building on recent debates inspired by Amerindian thought, I will investigate interconnected concepts such as body and sovereignty; freedom and dependency.

Previous Education

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Social Anthropology 2023
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina Psychology 2017
Universita Degli Studi Bologna Antropologia Culturale

Over years of studying literature, first as an undergraduate at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and then as a Master's student at the University of Oxford, I have developed an appreciation for the narratives that often go unheard. My work considers independent literary expression in India and turns to the ways in which writing and documentation can transform how we occupy, understand, and move in the world. By looking to minority voices, through scholarship and curatorial work, I hope to bring attention to the politics of artistic practice, building spaces that are are aware both of their potential and their responsibility.

Previous Education

University of Oxford World Literatures in English 2017
University of Delhi English 2016

I work on integrating vertebrate herbivory into models describing how forests function. Such models, which have typically overlooked the significant impacts of large mammalian herbivores on their environments, can be extended beyond their standard conservation applications to predicting how forests may sequester carbon to limit climate warming.

Previous Education

UNITECH International Society, Switzerland UNITECH International Fellowship 2002
Imperial College London MEng Chemical Engineering, First Class Honours 2002
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands International MSc Programme, Chemical Technology 2001

Links

http://www.linkedin.com/in/monceftanfour

Evelyn Tang joined the faculty in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice University, in 2021. Previously, she was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and before that, an Africk Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in the group of Dani Bassett. In 2015, she received her PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked with Xiao-Gang Wen on novel topological states in quantum electronic systems. She holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a BS from Yale University. Tang is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award, a Scialog award, a Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship, and a Gates Cambridge scholarship.

Previous Education

Yale University B.S. Physics 2007

Being born in the financial capital of India, Mumbai, and being raised by entrepreneurs has fundamentally shaped the trajectory of my intellectual interests. Early on, I saw that decisions have to be made pragmatically, to account for all possibilities and creatively, to adapt to unknown unknowns. I think this is the core of my motivation for studying Innovation, Strategy and Organisation : to help inform decisions of real businesses across a range of sectors, to glean broad insights so that diverse companies can better tackle the seismic shifts technological evolution brings. I aspire to contribute more perceptively to the conversation that I have been part of ever since I was a child. I aim to understand how businesses can scale effectively to leverage the capacity of distinctive companies that want to make a dent in the world. Studying PPE (BSc) has given me an interdisciplinary toolbox, supplemented by my experiences in working in the Indian parliament, a national industry body, a research database on governance mechanisms in institutions and at a venture capital fund. I am eager deploy both my theoretical and heuristic experiences in my future work.

Previous Education

King's College London (University of London) PPE 2024

While trying to decide what to study someone told me ‘Choose whatever allows you to help others more’. Throughout my studies in Mathematics and Physics in Granada, I discovered what a crucial role we have in improving our world and our understanding of it. I learnt to see them as two inseparable tools to explain nature and address some of the most fundamental questions about the Universe we live in. I am particularly keen to those arising in General Relativity, which deal with something as basic and yet as profound as the model for space and time. I am eager to learn as much as possible during my PhD to tackle some of the many fascinating open problems in the field. Along these years, I luckily came across wonderful teachers, who have made me the scientist I am today, thanks to whom I love what I study. They awoke in me the desire to one day have the same impact on future generations. Thus, I also hope to get training as an educator and science communicator, so that I can share my passion for what I do and encourage others to see the beauty and power of Mathematics and Physics. I feel immensely grateful for the chance to take the next step of my journey at Cambridge, and I am excited to join this passionate and inspiring community.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Mathematics 2023
Universidad de Granada Physics 2022
Universidad de Granada Mathematics 2022

I grew up in Lebanon and completed my undergraduate education in Chemical Engineering at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik. My previous research primarily focused on the resource security continuum, encompassing projects related to food, water, and energy security. While addressing these critical challenges, I became increasingly mindful of the health implications of our decisions in these areas. As we navigate these transformations, it is evident that numerous diseases continue to claim lives, persisting as severe, unresolved clinical conditions. Motivated by this awareness, I resolved to channel my background in Chemical Engineering towards contributing to the field of healthcare. This led me to pursue further studies by enrolling in the MPhil program in Advanced Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, generously supported by a scholarship from the Cambridge Trust and the Bseisu Foundation. Here, my research is currently dedicated to developing theranostic metal-organic frameworks aimed at facilitating certain forms of cancer treatment. As I pursue both my master's and Ph.D., my aim is to contribute significantly to this field with the goal of improving patient outcomes and alleviating the global burden of disease.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Advanced Chemical Engineering 2024
Holy Spirit University Kaslik Chemical Engineering 2023

I am a medievalist particularly interested in the reception of antiquity and the commentary practice in the Middle Ages, with a special focus on the traditions of Dante Commentary. I am currently revising my new critical edition of Francesco da Buti’s commentary (1385-96) on Dante’s Commedia for publication (Rome: Salerno Editrice). With Ambrogio Camozzi, I have recently concluded a monograph (Brepols, 2018) on the oldest ‘Florentine’ version of the life of Alexander the Great (c. 1350), witnessed by a lavishly illuminated manuscript now at the Jagiellonian Library, Kraków. I have also started to work on my next book-length project, ‘Dante and Late Medieval Pisa’, whose aim is to explore the vibrant and influential reception of Dante’s Commedia in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Pisa, especially in relation to the city’s longstanding political and cultural rivalry with Florence. In the field of Neo-Latin Studies, I am currently preparing the critical edition of XV Century anonymous Breve Compendium et utile super tota Dantis Allegherii Comedia.

Previous Education

University of Pisa MA Italian 2005

As an undergraduate physics student at King’s College London, I attended the Princeton Physics of Life seminar series. There, I was inspired by lectures indicating how physics can improve the understanding of biology, for instance, by describing the flight of birds using spin models. This also works the other way around; physics and technology can be advanced by mimicking nature’s solutions that were refined over the course of evolution. This motivated my summer research project that investigated how ant colonies’ behaviour can help optimize solutions to path-finding problems such as the ones in extra-terrestrial surface exploration. These bio-inspired technologies can not only aid humanity but also have potential benefits to the environment. (Optimized vehicle routing can reduce CO2 emissions and spare energy significantly.)My PhD would focus on exploring the information processing capabilities of a model of motile cilia. Apart from featuring interesting and mostly unexplored dynamics, the model could also form the basis of a new computational method that would be more suited for solving certain problems by creating a physical-based equivalent of a neural network.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Physics 2023
King's College London (University of London) Physics with Theoretical Phys. 2022

I will be undertaking an MPhil in Environment, Society & Development in order to build upon the experience I have of working in the field of development in Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, and the UK. My focus will be on sustainable development and the complex dynamics that result from the interaction between people and their environment.