21 Jul 08

John Blair

The British Academy, the national academy for the humanities and social sciences, has elected nine academics from Oxford University as new Fellows.

The British Academy awarded 38 new Fellowships in total with Oxford receiving more than any other university.

Sir Adam Roberts, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies in Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations and an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, has also been elected as the next British Academy President. His main teaching and research interests are in the fields of international security, organisations, and law.

He said: 'I am delighted and honoured to have been appointed President-elect by the Fellows of the British Academy and look forward to taking up the position in a year’s time. I relish the challenge of leading the Academy in the years ahead.'

Oxford's new Fellows are:

John Blair is Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology and a Fellow and Praelector of The Queen’s College. His research interests centre on the history, archaeology, and landscape of medieval England, notably churches, settlements, and material culture.

Christopher McCrudden is Professor of Human Rights Law and a Fellow of Lincoln College. His research interests are in the fields of constitutional, administrative, and comparative public law, with a particular specialisation in human rights law.

Vivienne Shue is Professor of the Study of Contemporary China, Director of the Contemporary China Studies Programme and a Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College. Her research interests are State and society, politics and economy, political institutions, political culture and political history of China; patterns and processes of political ligitimation.

Peter Neary is Professor of Economics and a Fellow of Merton College. His interests are oligopoly in general equilibrium, and its implications for a variety of issues in trade and competition policy.

Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography and a Fellow of St John’s College. Her research interests are theoretical and empirical work on the nature, form and implications of economic and social restructuring in contemporary Britain, examining issues related to poverty and inequality, especially access to labour market and their segmentation; transnational migration and feminist theory and methods.

Iain McLean is Professor of Politics and Official Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College. His interests are Government response to disaster, especially Aberfan (1966) and UK politics, including elections and core-periphery relations.

Martin Browning is Professor of Economics and a Fellow of Nuffield College. His interests are the economics of the family (particularly intra-household allocation); demand analysis; consumption and saving; the design of social support systems and modelling heterogeneity for applied work.

Roger Scruton is Visiting Senior Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall and member of the Philosophy Faculty. His interests extend from philosophy to political and cultural commentary, criticism, and novels.

Mark Williams is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow. His interests are psychological mechanisms in suicidal behaviour.

The current President, Baroness Onora O’Neill welcomed the new Fellows into the Academy. She said: 'Election to the Fellowship is the principal way in which the Academy recognises outstanding scholarly achievement. It comes as the culmination of a rigorous selection process in which each of the Academy’s eighteen different academic sections is involved.'

'This year we are pleased to welcome new Fellows from all of the disciplines represented in the Academy, displaying a variety of interests.' 

In addition, Dr Helen Small, Fellow and Tutor in English at Pembroke College was awarded this year's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. The prize goes 'to a woman of any nationality, who in the judgement of the council of the British Academy, has written or published an historical or critical work of sufficient value on any subject connected with English Literature, preference being given to a work regarding one of the poets Byron, Shelley and Keats'.

Professor Michael Metcalf, Emeritus Professor of Numismatics, has been awarded this year's Derek Allen Prize which goes to outstanding published work by a scholar in one of three academic fields in which Derek Allen, a former Fellow and Secretary of the Academy, had particular interest. These are in turn musicology, numismatics and Celtic studies.