My research focusses on the social and cultural history of religion, particularly Christianity, in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. 

I am presently engaged in a comparative project on the Atlantic regions of western Europe, drawing on case studies from Portugal, Galicia, and the Basque Country, through Aquitaine and Brittany, to Ireland and western Britain. This project has two main aims: firstly, to investigate the role played by monastic and ascetic structures in the institutionalisation of Christianity in these different regions; secondly, to trace the role that connectivity along the Atlantic seaboard played in cultural transmission (particularly of monastic texts) between the eastern Mediterranean and northern Europe. As part of this project, I have a strong interest in comparative historiography - that is, in understanding the ways in which different regional and national scholarly traditions have inflected our understanding of the past.

Prior to this, I worked chiefly on the Iberian Peninsula in the Suevic and Visigothic periods. My forthcoming monograph will illuminate the importance of ethical discourse in the assertion and contestation of religious power in late antique Iberia, and challenge institutionally focussed accounts of Christian history. Other publications arising from this research have addressed martyr cult, lay religion, and the history of Visigothic manuscripts.

I work in philosophy of language and neighboring fields. For more information and publications, please visit https://mandelkern.hosting.nyu.edu/.

The emergence and diversification of complex life is the most fundamental biological transition in the history of the Earth. My lab uses exceptional fossils to chart the evolution of eukaryotes (those organisms with membrane-bounded organelles), multicellularity, cellular differentiation, and animals, through the Proterozoic Eon (2.5-0.5 billion years ago). Understanding how changing fossil diversity correlates to environmental changes—and the Proterozoic Eon sees some of the largest in Earth history—is vital to determining evolutionary drivers.

Not only do we seek new fossils that provide this important palaeobiological information, we critically interrogate the nature of the fossil record. Before the terminal Proterozoic advent of biomineralisation, fossilisation is confined to poorly understood and unusual circumstances that preserve organic remains. My lab uses novel analytical techniques on fossiliferous strata to understand the conditions conducive to preservation, with a specific focus on microbe-mineral interactions. Such research is crucial to our ability to robustly interpret the temporal and ecological range of fossil organisms. It can also provide new insights into their original chemistry and biology.

My lab is always looking for talented and motivated researchers. If you are interested in joining our group as a doctoral student or post-doctoral researcher, please contact me via email.

Website: https://palaeobiology.web.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-ross-anderson

My research sits at the intersection of antiracist political theory and Critical Theory, including that of the German Frankfurt School, French poststructuralism, and the British Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. I am currently working on a book project focused on Frantz Fanon's sociogenic method of antiracist critique. Drawing in part on my doctoral thesis, I argue that the failure to theorize 'race' has substantial consequences for continental political theory including but not limited to understanding the reproduction of racial injustice. I have also written on the politics of voice and visibility in the U.S. and Northern Ireland. More broadly, I am interested in feminist thought, social epistemology, and continental philosophies of self and Other.

My research, at the intersection of history and literature, has two related strands: recovering the perspectives and experiences of ancient women—and reconsidering how we might access those perspectives—and working outwards from the study of individual relationships to re-examine larger-scale social structures. I am particularly interested in the complexities of emotional and bodily intimacy in exploitative relationships, and in the potential for approaching epigraphic texts commissioned by women as instances of women's self-writing.