Oxford Praxis Lab - Student Profiles

Simone Askew is a Rhodes Scholar and Masters in Public Policy student at the University of Oxford, where she also completed a MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. She is the first African American female to serve as the Brigade Commander of the U.S. Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point). She co-founded the Joint Service Academy Mass Atrocity Prevention Symposium and was President of the Cultural Affairs Seminar at West Point. She holds a BS in International History with a minor in Environmental Engineering.

Calder Tsuyuki Tomlinson is currently reading for an MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance. Dedicated to the value of working between multiple disciplinary practices, he is committed to helping bridge the gap between society and nature, science and policy, theory and praxis. Drawing from his independent reading into philosophy, training in classical Japanese arts, and Bachelor’s studies in International Relations, these interests have been developed through his artistic, institutional, and academic work. He is currently focused on the politics of international climate negotiations, in thinking through possibilities for innovative approaches to global climate governance that engage and account for multiple scales of action – politically as well as epistemologically.

Shanley McConnell is Head Editor of Lively Worlds. She is studying towards an MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, having previously completed an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Dundee. Her research interests lie in examining the relationships between humility, creativity, humanity and language, and she hopes to pursue a greater understanding of literature and its musicology—the ways its finds something new in the familiar. She often finds inspiration for her poetry in this beautiful tension of belonging to more than one country. Beyond her studies, Shanley enjoys the violin and travelling.

Professor Marc Ventresca is an economic sociologist in the Strategy, Innovation and Marketing Faculty at Saïd Business School and a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College. Marc's areas of expertise include market and network formation, entrepreneurship, governance, and innovation and technology strategy. His research and teaching focus on the formation of markets and networks in business and social settings. Specifically, he researches how markets are built and the actors who build them. He is also an expert in the areas of governance, innovation and technology and how they interact with markets and networks.

Anna Carthy is an MSc student of Environmental Change and Management. She is interested in the intersection of social justice and environmental issues, particularly issues of ‘sustainable development.’ She has interned in Haiti, seeing the impact of environmental change on people and livelihoods, and in Brussels, collaborating with environmental activists to learn about change-making initiatives. Before coming to Oxford, Anna worked for the UN Office for Project Services in international development cooperation. She is also involved in the Oxford Development Consultancy, Said Business School’s Circular Economy lab and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship’s Leading for Impact programme.

Alexis McGivern is a Pershing Square Scholar at the University of Oxford, currently studying for an MSc in Environmental Change and Management and will start her MBA at the Saïd Business School in September 2020. Alexis holds an MA Hons in International Relations from the University of St Andrews. Before Oxford, Alexis spent three years at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a secondee from the Gallifrey Foundation, working on issues of plastic pollution. She created Plastic Free Campus, a programme to support schools go plastic-free and established partnerships with UN agencies to develop two comic books on plastic pollution, which have since been translated into eight languages.

Rose Kobusinge is currently a Felix Scholar in MSc Environmental Change and Management at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. She also holds a BSc in Environmental Science (Honours) from Makerere University, Uganda. She has previously worked the WorldWide Fund for Nature Uganda Country office in Environmental Education and Communication projects helping primary school children and teachers in learning about climate change and environmental issues. During her last undergraduate year plus her one-year work with WWF-Uganda, she has been the focal young person in organizing environmental campaigns and was therefore honoured as the “Earth Hour Ambassador” for two consecutive years 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. She is an Environmental advocate who believes in ecological and social regeneration. She is also interested in transformative climate change adaptation for communities as well as Environmental Education and Communication.

Paula Kipf is a candidate for the MSc in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford. She holds two BScs in Physics and Business Administration from Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich. She worked in IT Consulting using Machine Learning for fraud detection and Management Consulting, contributing to a project to drastically produce carbon emissions of a manufacturing company.

Farron Rickerby is a MSc in Environmental Change and Management candidate at the University of Oxford, where her research focuses include environmental governance, political ecology, and decolonial theory. Farron holds a BSc (Hons) in Global Resource Systems from the University of British Columbia. Her educational portfolio spans multiple fields of study, including food systems, applied biology, geography, and political science. She has previously worked for the University of British Columbia as a Food Justice Pedagogy Project assistant, where she applied critical theory while designing undergraduate food systems curriculum. Farron has been involved with several social justice and environmental campaigns and hopes to continue contributing an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective to addressing social injustice and climate-related challenges.

Maya Adams is reading for a MSc in Environmental Change and Management through the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. She graduated from New York University Abu Dhabi with a passion for creative communication, education and climate action. Maya has actively engaged with a variety of organisations including the Global Landscape Forum, IRENA , NYU Center for Global Sea Level Change and Tree Adoption Uganda. She is particularly interested in exploring how critical theory can be applied and communicated in different spaces.

Marcus Alburez Myers is a graduate student reading for an MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance at Oxford University’s Centre for the Environment where he is a Leading for Impact Fellow through the Skoll Centre. He holds a BA in Finance & Entrepreneurship (Honours) from Loyola Marymount University, where he was recognized as a Global Leadership Scholar. Marcus has developed global health projects with the World Health Organization and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Túm, worked at a fossil-fuel-free investment firm, for a Swedish traveling creative production company, and at The Conduit, a home for a diverse community of people passionate about driving positive social and environmental change. His research focuses on tropical forest governance and climate change mitigation and adaptation financing. He is also an avid outdoorsman and photographer.

Marie-Therese Png is a PhD candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, and previously Technology Advisor to the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, addressing geographic representation in tech policy, digital inequality & human rights, lethal autonomous weapons, and cybersecurity. Her PhD thesis analyses political decolonisation efforts in the governance of autonomous decision making systems. Marie-Therese has previously worked at the intersection of technology ethics and systemic harms at DeepMind Ethics and Society, the MIT Media Lab, and the Harvard Artificial Intelligence Initiative. Marie- Therese holds an undergraduate in Human Sciences from Oxford, and a Master's from in Developmental Cognition and Intergroup Conflict from Harvard.