Stephen Fisher’s research into political attitudes and behaviour has produced election forecasting models widely used in the media nationally and internationally. He recently served as academic lead for the UNDP People’s Climate Vote Survey – the largest-ever survey of public opinion towards climate change. The survey has already generated discussion among governments internationally looking at climate and green recovery. 

Katherine Ibbett’s research focuses on early modern French literature, culture and political thought. Her book Compassion’s Edge won the 2018 Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize. Her current research exploring seventeenth-century literary rivers across texts from France and the Americas is supported by a Leverhulme Fellowship. Her commitment to thinking about the relation between early modern texts and critical questions of the present informs her teaching, including contributing to a series of lectures on histories of race, introducing students to the early modern Americas and to scholarly conversations about Indigenous knowledge and the history of slavery.

James McDougall’s research interests in Middle Eastern, African, and colonial history come together in his focus on Algeria, Africa’s largest country. His book A History of Algeria has won wide acclaim and was co-winner of the £10,000 BKFS Prize for the best scholarly work on the Middle East. He is a frequent commentator on North African politics in national and international media, and is now working on books on the French empire in Africa and the global history of Islam. He is one of the founders and organisers of the Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiography workshops, which bring together scholars working across different periods on the study of historical writing in Arabic. 

Dame Frances Ashcroft is a globally renowned physiologist whose research has significantly advanced our understanding of insulin secretion from pancreatic beta-cells in both health and disease. She discovered a key step in the process by which an increase in the blood sugar level after a meal leads to secretion of the hormone insulin. Her work on neonatal diabetes enabled children born with this rare genetic form of diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy. The author of a number of textbooks and popular science books, she has received numerous awards for her work and in the 2015 Birthday Honours, she was recognised for services to Medical Science and the Public Understanding of Science.