Mansfield People

Professor Derek McCormack is Tutor and Fellow in Geography. He has a PhD from the University of Bristol, an MSc from Virginia Tech, and a BA from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Derek has been at Mansfield since September 2009, having been a Tutor and Fellow at Hertford College for three years prior to that. Before arriving in Oxford in 2006 he held a lectureship in the School of Geography at the University of Southampton.

Broadly speaking, Derek's interests lie in the area of cultural geography - i.e. he is interested in the many ways people experience and make sense of spaces. His work focuses in particular on the affective/emotional dimensions of this process. To this end he has written about the affective experience of spaces in a range of contexts including arctic exploration, to air travel, to art and performance, to cities.

At Mansfield Derek tutors across the core human geography papers, as well as supervising a range of human geography dissertations topics. He also provides tutorials for his Final Honours School Special subject, Spaces of Politics.

Tess has overall responsibility for Development, alumni relations, College communications and fundraising at Mansfield; she leads the team and oversees all of its activities.

She has 20 years' experience of fundraising, both within Oxford's collegiate University and outside it. She has held senior Development roles at the National Gallery, and then Tate in London, and was Head of Development at the University's Ashmolean Museum for 7 years, leading the fundraising for the Museum's capital redevelopment and launching its successful endowment campaign. Most recently Tess has been a fundraising consultant for varied non-profits and charities.

Contact her about current campaigns, big questions, major gifts, or just to say hello.

Michèle Mendelssohn is Professor of English and American Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. She co-convenes the MSt in Victorian Literature. Her research ranges from late 19th century to the present day, and ranges across both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (including American, African American, British and Canadian literatures)

Phenomenology (particularly of the human body), Descartes, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Wittgenstein. DPhil thesis was on Freud and Sartre; did a mid-career MPhil in Medical Anthropology, thesis on cosmetic surgery, gender and embodiment. Publications include (with Gordon Baker) 'Descartes' Dualism'; an introductory book on Sartre and a more advanced introduction to Merleau-Ponty; introduced and edited a volume of Baker's articles under the title 'Wittgenstein's Method', and a collection entitled 'Sartre on the Body'; Co-editor of the UK edition of Sartre Studies International.

John studied Engineering at the University of Cambridge, and did his doctorate here at Oxford. After a Lectureship in Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College he moved to the USA, first as a Senior Research Associate at NASA and then as Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. John returned to the UK to become Director of Structural Materials at the Defence Research Agency which was eventually privatised to become QinetiQ where he was Chief Operating Officer of the Future Systems and Technology Division. Following a subsequent appointment as Chief Executive of the Engineering and Technology Board, John returned to Oxford where he now tutors undergraduate engineers.

Helen Mountfield KC joined Mansfield College as Principal in 2018.

Helen is a barrister, specialising constitutional law, human rights and equality law, with particular experience in the education sector. Helen is a founder member of Matrix Chambers, an accredited mediator, a Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn and is a past and present part-time judge in several jurisdictions including the High Court of England and Wales and the Channel Islands Courts of Appeal. She has appeared over 25 times in the Supreme Court and Privy Council, on hundreds of occasions in the Court of Appeal, European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights, and won many legal awards (including Legal 500 KC of the Year for Public Law in 2022). She features on the ‘First Hundred Years’ website, which celebrates the history of women in law.

Helen has also written and broadcast frequently on legal topics, including contributing to all eight editions of the Blackstone Guide to the Human Rights Act. She edited the White Book on human rights for many years, and is a member of the editorial board of Public Law.

Within Oxford University, she served on the Race Equality Task Force 2020-2021, and is co-Chair of the Joint Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. At Mansfield College, she is Tutor for Racial Inclusion alongside her role as Principal.

Helen also plays an active role in public policy. She has given evidence to Parliamentary committees on human rights, free speech and election and constitutional law issues on a number of occasions, and in 2016-2017 was co-chair, with Lord Watson, of the Independent Commission on the Future of Work in the Digital Economy, and a member of the Royal Society of Arts’ Commission on Drugs Policy. She is currently at trustee of Index on Censorship and has also served as a trustee, director and advisory board member of many other NGOs and charities, in the fields of the arts, human rights and justice, and equality.

She was educated at Crown Woods School (now Stationers’ Crown Woods Academy) in south-east London - by coincidence, one of Mansfield’s partner schools. From there she read Modern History at Magdalen College Oxford, where she obtained a first-class degree, directed plays and was one of the first ‘Target Schools’ officers. In 2023, she became an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen.

Alex teaches undergraduations: Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, The Gospels, Paul and Pauline Tradition, and The Figure of Jesus through the Centuries.

Nathan has completed his MA in Theology at Trinity Oxford, and his MTh at St Stephen's House, Oxford while training for ministry. He served his curacy in St Andrew, St George Stevenage, and Oak Church Stevenage. He was a member of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield in 2021. Before joining Mansfield, Nathan worked as a Assistant Priest at St Peter's Church, De Beauvoir Town. He is also studying for a PhD with the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge on phenomenological readings of Maximus the Confessor in relation to ecotheology.

Nathan Mulcock is the College Chaplain and is part of the welfare team. He supports and serves the whole community of the College. Whether in consideration of relationships, work or study difficulties, spiritual or vocational issues, or for casual discussion, the chaplain is available to speak with staff and students at any time, no matter their faith or philosophy.

Contact him at: chaplain@mansfield.ox.ac.uk.

Naoise's research and teaching interests are in queer and trans studies, gender and sexuality, modern and contemporary literature and postcolonial studies. They are currently working on a book for Edinburgh University Press about queerness, gender, space and time in twentieth-century Ireland, focusing on the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O’Brien, Molly Keane and Dorothy Macardle. They have a particular interest in queer and radical histories, as well as oral history and site-specific methodologies. They have worked on collaborative and community research projects investigating queer history and colonial legacies in Cambridge, gendered experiences in higher education and radical history in London. They have received their PhD in Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge, Centre for Gender Studies in 2023 and they have taught English at the University of Cambridge and Maynooth University.

A decolonial political geographer with interests in environmental justice, resistance studies, and social change, Dr. Amber Murrey is an Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College. Before joining the faculty at Oxford, Amber taught at the American University in Cairo, Jimma University (Ethiopia), Clark University and Boston College.

She is the editor of "A Certain Amount of Madness": The Life, Politics and Legacy of Thomas Sankara (Pluto Press, 2018). Listen to her interview on the legacy of Thomas Sankara on the BBC World News programme, The Forum. Amber has authored more than a dozen articles and chapters on race and racism, extraction, and decolonial ethics in the social sciences. She tweets @Amber.Murrey.

Sarath is also a Graduate Teaching Assistant for Intellectual Property Law and DPhil Researcher at the Faculty of Law. He completed his Bachelor's in Law, B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences; and his Master's in Law, LLM in Commercial Laws from the University of Cambridge.

Sarath graduated his LLM with the 'CMS Prize for Corporate Law' for distinction in Corporate Finance Law examination, and was the Pratibha M. Singh Cambridge Trust scholar during his LLM year.

He has served on the editorial boards of the Cambridge Law Review and the Journal of Indian Law and Society. He was the Chief Editor of the Journal of Indian Law and Society during his last 6 months with the journal. Sarath worked for one year in Ambala district in Haryana as a Chief Minister's Good Governance Associate wherein he worked with the State Government and the District Administration to improve public administration. Sarath has also served as the Administrative Head of the NUJS-HSF Bridge Project, a project that educates underprivileged kids living in the slums of Kolkata.