St John’s Elects Seven New Career Development Research Fellows
In 2024, St John’s established an ambitious new fellowship programme for early-career researchers. These four-year, fixed-term Career Development Research Fellowships provide an outstanding opportunity for postdoctoral scholars to pursue programme of original research whilst contributing to teaching and other academic activities within the College.
The programme is unrivalled across Oxford colleges in terms of its scale and range. The College aims to elect at least one Career Development Research Fellow in each subject taught at St John’s, enriching its research and teaching community across a range of disciplines.
In the last two academic years, the College has elected the following thirteen Career Development Research Fellows: Samuel Boateng (Music), Anna Dewar (Biology), Eleanor Eldridge (Law), Muting Hao (Engineering), Noah Kravitz (Mathematics, National Science Foundation Fellow), Carolyn T. La Rocco (Late Antiquity and Early Medieval History), Shurui Miao (Chemistry), Alice Millington (Archaeology and Anthropology), Guilia Morale (History of Art), Ashkan Sepahvand (Fine Art), Jakub Skrzeczkowski (Mathematics), Joshua Smailes (Computer Science) and Alina Utrata (Politics). Two other Career Development Research Fellows elected in this period have already gone on to permanent employment in other universities, a testament to the quality of the scheme.
Ahead of the 2026/27 academic year, Governing Body approved the appointment of seven further Career Development Research Fellows in Classics, English, Geography, Modern Languages, Physics, Psychology and Theology.
Merten Wiltshire (CDRF in Classics) recently completed a doctorate at the University of Cambridge on the epigraphy and palaeography of Cretan hieroglyphic.
Philip Trotter (CDRF in English) recently completed a doctorate at the University of Toronto on the relationship between sentiment and the sublime in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Nicole Kleinheisterkamp Gonzalez (CDRF in Geography) holds a PhD from Syracuse University, New York. Her thesis examined how German industrial trade unions and workers in the automobile and coal industries navigate the profound challenges of the green transition.
Alexandra Hertlein (CDRF in Modern Languages) is currently a Stipendiary Lecturer in German at St Peter’s and Hertford Colleges. She recently completed a doctorate from the University of Oxford which examined concepts of originality in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literature.
Richard Stiskalek (CDRF in Physics) recently completed a doctorate in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford. He studies the structure and expansion of the nearby Universe.
Eleanor Spens (CDRF in Psychology) is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience, working on how our brains learn predictive models of the world offline, how frontal cortex develops useful abstractions, and how this relates to recent advances in AI. She holds a PhD from University College London.
Karina Atudosie (CDRF in Theology) recently completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford on the interpretation of Biblical royal women in light of enthronement, gender and ritual.
Congratulations to all seven newly elected fellows.