Fellowship Registrar's Report

The College has a new Bursar, Lizzy Conder. In addition to her skills in managing money, she will advise the College on cricket, strathspeys and reels. Three more official Fellows have joined the College: Juan Block (Reddaway Fellow) becomes a Tutor and Director of Studies in Economics. He is an expert in microeconomics and game theory. Alpa Parmar, learnèd in criminal law and criminal justice, will teach and direct studies in Law. Matt Kenzie, a former Research Fellow, returns from the University of Warwick to teach Physics, and to be a Graduate Tutor for the coming year. He is searching for symmetry violations between matter and anti-matter, and is a member of the Large Hadron Collider beauty collaboration. Darren Peterson joins the College as Bye-Fellow to teach Law, bringing his knowledge of modern slavery, human rights and the law of the sea.

New Research Fellows join the College: Maria Tătulea-Codrean (Lynden-Bell Research Fellow) is a mathematician studying bacteria and how they swim. Laura van Holstein is an evolutionary biologist studying speciation in mammals: what sets humans apart? Macarena Arenas, a pure mathematician studying hyperbolic and non-positively curved groups and spaces, joins the College as the Denman Baynes Senior Student.

Several Fellows have moved on from Clare this year. Andrew Balmford, who is Professor of Conservation Sciences and has driven the College Environment Committee and kept Clare at the top of the University’s Green Impact Competition; Andrew Friend, who has been our Director of Studies in Geography; Julia Wolf, Director of Taught Postgraduate Education in the Faculty of Mathematics; and Ignas Budvytis, an Engineer and expert in computer vision, have all stepped down from their Fellowships. Louis Klee has left his Research Fellowship and moved next door to teach English at Trinity Hall. We are grateful to them all for their many contributions to College life. Duncan Robinson, who remained a Bye-Fellow of Clare after moving to become Master of Magdalene, died at the end of 2022.

Our College Research Associates continue to contribute generously to teaching and College life. Our CRA convenor, Matteo Molè, leaves Clare to take up a position as an assistant professor in obstetrics and gynaecology at Stanford University.

Fellows’ academic successes over the last year include Jaideep Prabhu’s election to the British Academy and the election of Cathie Clarke and Phil Jones to the Royal Society. Cathie Clarke has also become Director of the Institute of Astronomy and joins the very small group of people who have both won the University’s Pilkington Teaching Prize and also become Fellows of the Royal Society. Two other Clare Fellows, Andrew Balmford and Larry Paulson, have achieved this, as well as alumna Marion Holness.

The University’s promotions process has rewarded the achievements of Clare Fellows. Maciej Dunajski has been promoted to be a Professor (Grade 12), whilst Jackie Tasioulas, Rebecca Lawson, Flavio Toxvaerd and Oli Shorttle have all become Professors. Whilst producing the internationally significant research required for this recognition of excellence, they have, between them, covered the roles of Graduate Tutor, Directors of Studies in Mathematics, Psychology and Earth Sciences, chaired the University Senior Tutors' Education Committee, and been Senior Tutor, over the stressful time of a global pandemic.

Research continues to flourish in the College. To choose just one example, David Hodell spent his sabbatical on the drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution recovering cores of sediment from beneath the seafloor off the coast of Portugal, in order to reconstruct past climate change for the last several million years and continuing the work of the late Professor Sir Nicholas Shackleton FRS (1958).