Sustainable Research

Interest in sustainability and the environment is reflected in a broad range of the research undertaken at St Hilda’s by both academic staff and students working in the Sciences, Social Sciences and the Humanities. Here are just a few examples:

Professor David Howey, Tutorial Fellow in Engineering, leads a research group focused on modelling and control of battery systems for electric cars and the power grid. His current flagship activities include the Faraday Institution Multiscale Modelling project, and the Energy Superhub Oxford project that includes a transmission connected 50 MWh hybrid battery near Oxford. Professor Howey is passionate about research having real world application and is co-founder of Brill Power, a company spun-out of his lab in 2016 focused on advanced battery management system topologies. Find out more.

Lecturer in Geography, Dr Lisa Wedding, has worked with the Oxford Seascape Ecology Laboratory on a study exploring the future of applied seascape ecology research, a recently-emerged discipline which applies principles of landscape ecology to marine environments. Find out how Dr Wedding’s research team turned to a technology called LiDAR (light detection and ranging) to create 3D models, bringing out the complexity of the coral reef seafloor. 

Geoffrey Liddell (Engineering, 2016), was the winner of our Middle Common Room Research Poster Competition in Hilary Term 2021, with his Wood Decomposing Fungi. Geoffrey’s interests are Ecology and Biological Networks and he has been involved in groups studying transport in fungi, and heart rot in trees.

Dr Rebecca Armstrong, Mary Bennett Tutorial Fellow in Classics, has a particular interest in representations of plants in the literature of the ancient world. Her most recent book, Vergil’s Green Thoughts: Plants, Humans, and the Divine (OUP, 2019) makes the case for reading Vergil’s plants as an integral part of his complex reflections on humanity’s place in relation to nature, religion, and science.