Tutors
Debate Chamber Tutors
Debate Chamber Tutors have expertise across a wide variety of subjects and specialisms. Below are a selection of sample biographies. A complete list for each subject is available on the relevant subject pages.
Silvia Ferabolli – Politics and International Relations
Specializing in Arab politics and Third World studies, Silvia has papers published in leading Latin American journals and several articles published in Le Monde Diplomatique (Brazilian edition). She is the author of a newly launched book on Arab regionalism, International Relations of the Arab World. She was a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Politics at SOAS for a year, where she conducted tutorials related to her most experienced area of teaching: theories of international relations. She is currently a Doctoral student in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Courtney Cox – Philosophy
Courtney is a doctoral student in philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, writing on issues of ethics and time. She holds a BA from Yale University (Electrical Engineering; and PPE) and a BPhil (Philosophy) from Oxford. In addition to ethics, her interests include Chinese language and area studies, and nuclear energy/nonproliferation policy.
Joanne Lim – Economics
Joanne is now pursuing a Master of Laws at the London School of Economics. Her love for economics blossomed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at Yale University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and Master of Arts respectively in the subject. After working for several years in both the public and private sectors, she is a firm believer that systems must be structured to produce the right behavioural incentives. Her specialisations are international trade, taxation, foreign investment policies and the economics of intellectual property.
Nick Long – Anthropology
Nick Long is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He recently competed a PhD, also at Cambridge, which was based on eighteen months’ anthropological fieldwork in the Riau Achipelago (Indonesia), investigating the social consequences of political and demographic change. He supervises undergraduates from numerous Cambridge colleges for papers on the anthropology of cities, political economy, and anthropological theory and teaches postgraduate classes on the anthropology of politics and fieldwork methods.
Frederick Cowell – Law
Fred is currently the London Officer and Head of Office for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, an international NGO that promotes Human Rights in Commonwealth countries. He is currently in charge of projects designed to promote Freedom of Information Law in small states, build Human Rights capacity in the UK’s Overseas Territories and develop freedom of speech legislation in Africa. Alongside this he is currently studying for a PhD in International Human Rights Law and his research interests include African Human Rights law, the International Criminal Court and theories of Administrative law. Whilst studying for the Bar he won the BPP Human Rights Prize and was a scholar of the Middle Temple. He has previously worked as researcher for Constitution Unit, specialising in UK human rights law and freedom of information, and as legal representative in the Social Security and Employment tribunals.
Sherry Tsai – Medicine
Sherry is a Paediatrics Doctoral student at the Queen’s college, Oxford. She completed her medical training at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her main academic interest is the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae, a common cause of middle ear infection in children. for almost a decade, Sherry has been an active volunteer and private tutor in many biomedically related subjects.
Giang H. Nguyen - Medicine
Giang graduated summa cum laude from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has previously completed two years of research at the National Cancer Institute as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar. She is currently reading for a Doctor of Philosophy in Medical Oncology at Balliol College, Oxford. Her doctoral dissertation is focused on studying the role of a small non-coding RNA in a premature aging condition known as Bloom syndrome. Her main interest lies in the interplay between cancer and aging, and she has published a number of articles on this subject.
Francesca Maresca – Physics
Francesca gained her M.Sc. in High Performance Computing and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She specialized in Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD) the theory that studies quarks and their interactions via computer simulation. As a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Utah, USA, she worked on several projects on LQCD and contributed to authoritative scientific papers published in leading journals and presented at international conferences. She worked for three years in the Aerospace Industry where she applied her knowledge of fundamental physical principles and computer simulations to engineering problems.
David Fairweather – Drama
David trained as an actor at LAMDA and then appeared in productions at theatres including the Royal National Theatre , the Young Vic and the Sheffield Crucible. His teaching work includes the V&A theatre collections and the Royal National Theatre eduction department.
Paul Earlie – English Literature
Paul graduated with a BA in English Literature and French from Trinity College, Dublin, before completing an MPhil in European Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. He is currently reading for a DPhil at Balliol College, Oxford, examining the links between deconstruction and Freudian psychoanalysis. Though his main interests lie in continental philosophy, other academic interests include literary theory, European modernism and postwar political fiction.
Subodhana Wijeyeratne – History
Subodhana is a Masters student in Japanese Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He studied History at Emmanuel College, the University of Cambridge, from 2001 to 2004, and subsequently lived and worked in Iwami-cho, a village in rural Japan, for two years. His academic interests include the interaction of culturally and ethnically distinct groups, such as the lives of Jews during the Islamic Caliphate and 19th and 20th century Japanese perceptions of foreigners. He was elected President of the Emmanuel College Student Union in 2003 and President of the Tottori chapter of the Association of Japan Exchange and Teaching in 2005.
Ben Jasper – History & Politics
Ben is completing the second year of his M.Phil in Politics at Wadham College, Oxford having graduated from there with a first class degree in Modern History. He has a wide range of interests ranging from the history of political thought to the role of the military in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also an experienced debater and coach and has taught university and school students throughout the world with recent trips to Hong Kong, Japan and Lebanon.
Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal – History and International Relations
Daniel-Joseph is a security analyst, journalist and historian. He is the security coverage editor of the prominent online journal, openDemocracy. He has written numerous articles on recent security developments around the world and is currently editing the journal’s 2009 annual review. Daniel-Joseph received a first-class degree in international relations and history at the London School of Economics and went on to complete an M.Phil degree at Cambridge, where his research centred on 20th century imperialism and intercultural relations in the Near and Middle East.