Four academics will be recommended for election as unofficial Fellows at Gonville & Caius College from October 1, 2022, after a high-calibre Research Fellowship competition.

Victoria Baena in English and Lila O’Leary Chambers in History have been recommended for election by the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Fellowship sub-committee. Victoria is currently a 2022 Postdoctoral Fellow at the New York Public Library, continuing her research into literature and cartography, while Lila is a historian of race, slavery, and commodification in the early modern Atlantic.

David Hosking in Physics and Vaithish Velazhahan in Molecular Biology have been recommended for election by the Sciences sub-committee. David is undertaking a DPhil in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, with his thesis presenting a new theory of magnetised turbulence and exploring its implications for the evolution of magnetic fields in the early Universe. Vaithish is currently at Sidney Sussex College, working on his PhD in Structural Biology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

The Master, Professor Pippa Rogerson, said: “We are delighted that Lila, Victoria, David, and Vaithish will be joining Caius in October.

“Research Fellows are key members of our community. They bring new ideas and scholarship to better pursue the College’s purposes of education and research and the selection of final candidates was challenging and competitive.

“I’d like to thank all members of the sub-committees for their hard work and attention to detail over the process. Particularly Prof Timothy Pedley (Chair) and Prof Sir Alan Fersht (Secretary) for Sciences, and Prof Joachim Whaley (Chair) and Dr Rebecca Sugden (Secretary) for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.”

More about the competition winners:

Victoria Baena received her undergraduate degree in History and Literature from Harvard (summa cum laude), and was recently awarded her PhD in Comparative Literature (with distinction) from Yale. Her postgraduate studies focused on space, place, and mobility in the nineteenth-century novel, primarily in French and English. An essay of hers won the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association's Naomi Schor Memorial Award, and she is continuing her research into literature and cartography as 2022 Postdoctoral Fellow at the New York Public Library.

Lila O'Leary Chambers is a historian of race, slavery, and commodification in the early modern Atlantic. She completed her BA in History and English Literature at the State University of New York at Geneseo. She then earned her PhD in History at New York University, where she graduated with honours. Her recently completed dissertation is entitled ‘’Liquid Capital: Alcohol and the Rise of Slavery in the British Atlantic, 1623-1736,” and was generously supported by the Folger Library, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Doris Quinn Foundation, among others.

David Hosking completed his master’s degree in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics at Merton College, Oxford, in 2018. He remained at Oxford to pursue a DPhil in Astrophysics — his thesis presents a new theory of magnetised turbulence and explores its implications for the evolution of magnetic fields in the early Universe.

Vaithish Velazhahan has a BS (Honors) in Microbiology and Medical Biochemistry from Kansas State University, USA. He is currently at Sidney Sussex College, working on his PhD in Structural Biology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and is a Gates scholar. His doctoral work has led to two first-authored manuscripts in the journal Nature and has been awarded with the Max Perutz Prize.