Vice-Chancellor Professor Irene Tracey CBE FRS FMedSci, grew up in Kidlington and completed her undergraduate degree and doctorate at Merton College, Oxford, in biochemistry. With the exception of a few years at Harvard Medical School she has spent her career in Oxford. She was Warden of Merton College from 2019-22 and is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, a department she led for several years. Professor Tracey was a founding member of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB – now the world-leading Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging); she was its Director from 2005 until 2015. She became Vice-Chancellor in January 2023, with one of her commitments being to strengthen and deepen the relationships between the city, county and University.
Professor Tracey’s research on the neuroscience of pain has contributed to a better understanding of pain perception and its relief in the human brain. She has used neuroimaging to better understand anaesthesia-induced altered states of consciousness. She has won academic and international prizes throughout her career, most recently election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Medical Research in 2022.

Dr Miriam J Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Publishing & Subject Coordinator for the MA in Publishing at the School of Arts, Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment Oxford Brookes University.

Rosie Talbot (Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford, History of Art 2009) is an author, bookseller and Booktocker. She’s a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative and Write Mentor. Her about-to-be self-published debut novel Sixteen Souls was acquired directly by Scholastic after gaining traction on social media as @merrowchild.