In the business of… academia

Join us at this special In the Business of Academia Panel and Networking Event, chaired by Dr Julian Huppert to find out more about working life after a PhD. Current students can register for free via Eventbrite.

We are delighted to be joined by the following panelists:

Harry R. McCarthy completed his undergraduate studies in English and French at the University of Exeter before moving to Oxford to complete the MSt. in English (1550-1700). He returned to Exeter to undertake a PhD on boy actors on the early modern English stage before being appointed at Jesus in 2019. He is the author of Performing Early Modern Drama Beyond Shakespeare: Edward's Boys (Cambridge UP, 2020) and Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge UP, 2022), and won the J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize from the Shakespeare Association of America in 2021. Harry's current research project considers how the framework of premodern critical race studies might be applied to children in the early modern period, and interrogates how early modern children and their literary depictions were subject to structures of racial formation and notions of whiteness. He has contributed to programmes on BBC Radio 4 and BBC 2, and worked on collaborative projects with theatre companies such as Shakespeare’s Globe (London), Edward’s Boys (Stratford-upon-Avon), Creation Theatre (Oxford) and The Show Must Go Online.

Mollie Arbuthnot specialises in visual culture in the early Soviet Union – including mass media, propaganda, and theories of viewership – as well as the history of Soviet multinationalism. Her current research project examines Islamic and Central Asian art in Soviet museums.

Jeremy Baumberg is a leader in nanoscience and nanotechnology, working for much of his career at the interface between academia and industry. He has led interdisciplinary nano-centres at the Universities of Cambridge and Southampton, and developed novel devices within Hitachi, IBM, his spin-offs Mesophotonics and Base4. He is widely recognised as a leading innovator in Nano, with most recent awards being the Institute of Physics Faraday Medal (2017), Royal Society Rumford Medal (2014), Institute of Physics Young Medal (2013), Royal Society Fellowship (2011) and Royal Society Mullard Prize (2005).

Daniel Snowman is a social and cultural historian. Born in London, he was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge (1958-61; Double First in History) after which he did postgraduate work at Cornell, became a Lecturer at the new University of Sussex and went on to work at the BBC where he produced a wide variety of radio projects on cultural and historical topics. Since 2004 a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research (U of London), Daniel's recent books include a study of the cultural impact of the ‘Hitler Emigrés’ and The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera. His Memoir, Just Passing Through: Interactions with the World 1938-2021, was published last year. For more see: https://danielsnowman.org.uk

Selma Walther is an applied microeconomist specialising in questions relating to labour economics, the family, inequality, and gender. She holds a PhD, MPhil and BA Hons from the University of Cambridge, and was previously a Nuffield Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Sussex. Her research has been published in top academic journals such as Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Development Economics, and featured in policy blogs and on social media. She is currently studying how the stagnating income of low earning men affects their ability to form families in Norway, and how the Great Recession shaped investment choices of poor and wealthy households in Denmark, and contributed to widening inequality during this period.

Natasha Awais-Dean is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History, King’s College London where she also works as Research Integrity Manager for the Arts and Sciences Faculties. She read Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge, specialising in French and Italian, then studied for an MA in History of Design at the Royal College of Art before receiving her doctorate from Queen Mary, University of London. Her research interests include the material culture of early modern Europe, with specialism in jewellery, and she is author of Bejewelled: Men and Jewellery in Tudor and Jacobean England (2017) among other chapters and articles. Natasha has previously worked in curatorial roles at the British Museum, the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery before moving into a career in university administration. She is also a passionate advocate for EDI and co-chairs the network for parents and carers at King’s and leads a number of initiatives across the university to support her colleagues in this space. Natasha is a Trustee of the Society of Jewellery Historians, where she was formerly Features Editor of Jewellery History Today and co-editor of Jewellery Studies.

Simon Bending is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath. He graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Natural Sciences (Physics) in 1979 and completed a PhD in the field of superconductivity at Stanford University in 1985. Following postdoctoral positions at IBM Zürich and the Max Planck Institut FKF in Stuttgart he joined the Physics Department at the University of Bath in 1989. Since then he has built up an experimental research group with a focus on unconventional superconductivity and spintronics and has taught extensively at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has also held several major management roles including Head of the Department of Physics from 2013-2016.

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