Patrick works on the history of the Insular world in the medieval period. He is particularly interested in institutional histories and understanding how ecclesiastical institutions interacted with royal power in the early medieval period. Patrick has recently submitted his PhD and has been Lecturing in the History of the Celtic-Speaking Peoples in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic. Patrick also sits on the committee of the London Society for Medieval Studies, an affiliate of the Institute for Historical Research. For his academic profile see here.
Patrick also maintains interests in policy research and application. He has participated in the Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange, working with Cambridgeshire County Council to improve their offer to care experienced young people in Cambridgeshire. In 2021, he took up a Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, producing research for MPs and Peers on the topic of adult education. Patrick also works as a Policy Research Assistant at the Centre for Science and Policy based at the University of Cambridge.
Elvira Tamus conducts her doctoral research on early sixteenth-century Franco-Hungarian diplomacy in the context of the Valois-Habsburg-Ottoman great power relations at the Cambridge History Faculty. Her microhistorical approach focuses on the relations, loyalty, communication, rhetoric, practices, and services of diplomatic actors in order to explore how their agency contributed to high politics, and the ways in which the circulation of people and information created an interconnected geopolitical space between Central Europe and the Mediterranean.
Elvira obtained her BA degree in History and French at the University of Leicester (UK) and her MA degree in Medieval and Early Modern European History at Leiden University (The Netherlands). She has been a Visiting Student at the Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities (Budapest, Hungary); Sorbonne University (Paris, France); and the Université libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium). Elvira has co-organised several academic seminars and conferences, and co-edited Carnival: Journal of the International Students of History Association. She teaches European and world history at the Cambridge History Faculty and the Global History Lab Program.
Lisa has recently earned a PhD in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis focused on the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) in the UK. She examined its struggle to utilise its standing as a political party to ensure that women’s interests are represented. Discourse analysis, interviews, and participatory action research – along with comparisons made to feminist/women’s political parties in Iceland and Sweden – were carried out to understand WEP’s aim to ‘put itself out of business’.
Lisa is involved in various initiatives to bring about gender equality and strives to apply a gendered lens to geopolitical and security issues. Since 2020 she has participated in UN Women activities as a National Gender Youth Activist. She has contributed to several projects relating to gender and disarmament with the UN Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. Additionally, Lisa has recently begun her tenure as a Royal United Services Institute Next Generation Ambassador.