Last week the Master admitted four new Fellows to Corpus: Dr Duncan Hewitt (an applied mathematician), Dr Sarah Loos (a mathematician/theoretical physicist), Dr Chiara Martini (researching ancient philosophy), and Dr Alicia Smith (researching medieval religious literature, and based in the Parker Library).

Meet our new Fellows

Dr Duncan Hewitt is an applied mathematician who is interested in using mathematics to model and better understand the world around us. His research lies in the broad fields of fluid dynamics and mathematical modelling, with applications to geophysical, industrial, and biological settings.

His particular research interests include the mechanics of rheologically complex materials, flow through porous and deformable media, and the behaviour of granular suspensions.

Duncan received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College, 2014), and was a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (2015-19). He has also worked as a postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and more recently as an Associate Professor at University College London (2019-23).

Dr Sarah Loos completed her PhD in Statistical Physics at Technical University Berlin in 2020 and subsequentially worked as postdoctoral researcher in Germany (at Leipzig University) and Italy (at ICTP, Trieste). Since June 2022, she has been independent postdoctoral fellow in the Soft Matter Group at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, initially funded by a Walter-Benjamin Research Fellowship from the German Research Foundation, and since September 2023 by a Marie-Curie Research Fellowship (undertaken by UKRI).

Sarah is generally interested in the theoretical description of complex systems that operate far from thermal equilibrium. In her research, she uses statistical physics and thermodynamics and combines them with concepts from control theory and nonlinear dynamics. Her current work is particularly concerned with stochastic thermodynamics, non-Markovian processes, and active matter. Key research questions include the notion of heat and entropy on small length scales and the manifestation of irreversibility from the level of individual particle trajectories to the collective motion of many-particle systems.

Dr Chiara Martini's main research interest is ancient philosophy of physics and mathematics, with a particular focus on ancient theories of space. Before joining Corpus Christi, Chiara worked as a departmental lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Oxford, in association with Somerville College. Previously she did a DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Pembroke and St Anne’s Colleges), where she worked under the supervision of Prof Ursula Coope and Dr Michail Peramatzis on a thesis titled ‘Fiction and Reality in Aristotle’s Philosophy of Geometry’. The thesis investigates the relation between Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry and his physics. In particular, Sarah is interested in the relation between physical and geometrical modality, and how geometry applies to the physical world.

Dr Alicia Smith will be the Parker Library Early-Career Research Fellow in 2023-24. Her research deals with medieval religious literature and culture and modern engagement with this aspect of the past, and currently focuses on the figure of the ‘harlot saint’ Thais.

She completed a BA in English Language and Literature at St Catherine’s College, Oxford and an MPhil in Medieval Literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 2020 she completed her DPhil at the Queen’s College, Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Annie Sutherland. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Anchoritic Prayer in Time: Enclosure and Encounter, c. 1080-1150’, examined the literature surrounding religious recluses in high medieval England. She was a co-organiser of the landmark international conference ‘New Visions of Julian of Norwich’ in Oxford, July 2022, contributing to a grant enabling her and her co-organisers to work with playwright Cindy Oswin to develop and premiere a new one-woman play on Julian, ‘CELL’.

In 2022-23 she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, Canada, and began her current research on the early Christian saint Thais who converted from a life of sex work to a penitential enclosure in a tiny cell.

She has published articles on a variety of other subjects, including solitaries and medievalism in the work of T.S. Eliot. She writes about academic life and faith for a general audience at the Thinking Faith Network.

We also welcome two Visiting Professors, who will be with us for the term:

Ciara Breathnach from the University of Limerick, and Marianne Eriksen, from the University of Leicester.