Page 60 - Mansfield 2019/20

Dr Nishant Kumar
College Associate
Nishant received a £15,000 grant from India-Oxford initiative’s Global Challenge research funds, for the organisation of collaborative workshops in India from August 2020 to July 2021. He has also
completed Phase V of the Black Kite Project, on which he has been working with Professor Andrew Gosler. He is in the process of seeking a five-year extension from the Raptor Research & Conservation Foundation, Mumbai.
Nishant is a researcher jointly based at the Department of Zoology (University of Oxford) and the Wildlife Institute of India. In Delhi, he tries to understand opportunistic animal responses to resources provided by humans, and how centuries of coexistence have tied urban ecology of commensals with religiously founded patronage and ritual animal feeding by people. He is currently interested
in understanding the socio-economic and public health impacts of scavenging ecosystem services provided by opportunistic commensals, and how their biocultural links are vital for a sustainable urban future in South Asia.
Recent publications:
‘Dynamic characterisation of space in South-Asian megacities shapes the commensalism of a facultative avian scavenger’, in Indigenous Urbanism, ed S Sharma, G Edwards (Routledge).
‘Human Dimensions Modulate Commensalism in Tropical Megacities: the case of an urban raptor in Delhi (India)’, in Ecology of Tropical Cities: Natural and Social Sciences Applied to the Conservation of Urban Biodiversity, ed F Angeoletto, P Tryjanowski and M Fellowes (Springer Nature).
‘GPS telemetry unveils the regular high elevation crossing of the Himalayas by a migratory raptor: implications for a definition of a Central Asian Flyway’, N Kumar, U Gupta, YV Jhala, Q Qureshi, AG Gosler, and F Sergio, in Scientific Reports 10 15988 (2020).
‘Cities, why do certain birds thrive there?’, N Kumar, U Gupta, YV Jhala, Q Qureshi, AG Gosler, and F Sergio, in Frontiers for Young Minds (8:46. doi:10.3389/frym.2020.00046).
Professor David Leopold
John Milton Fellow in Politics
Recent publications:
‘Karl Marx and the Capabilities Approach’, in Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach, ed E Chiappero-Martinetti, S Osmani, and M Qizilbash (CUP, 2020).
‘Alienation’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed
EN Zalta (Research Laboratory at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University). Online at http:// plato.stanford.edu).
Elizabeth Li
Outgoing Junior Dean
Elizabeth Li celebrated her small, socially distanced wedding at Mansfield Chapel on 22 August 2020.
Professor Paul Lodge
Professorial Fellow in Philosophy
During 2019/20 Paul held a Theatres Seed Fund Grant from TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) to develop ‘Cantat Ergo Sumus’ with local
band Flights of Helios – a project that consists of setting poems written by philosophers to music. Sadly, this is on hold due to the Covid-19 outbreak. However, during the first lockdown, he wrote and recorded a number of other songs. These include ‘Preludes to Wordsworth’, nine settings of poems for the project ‘Wordsworth 250 – For the Love of Nature’ (http://www.wordsworth250. com/), which celebrates Wordsworth’s 250th anniversary; Paul is currently working with Ryan Michaels, a Nashville-based producer, to turn this into an album. For demo recordings of both these projects see: https://www.paullodge.com/music.
Paul was on sabbatical during 2019/20 and began developing a new research project concerned with what it is like to live a life that has involved manic experience. This is derived in part from his own experiences as someone with a bipolar-disorder diagnosis.
Recent publications:
Leibniz’s Key Philosophical Writings: A Guide, co-edited with L Strickland (Oxford University Press, 2020). ISBN 9780198844983.
‘The Theodicy’ in Leibniz’s Key Philosophical Writings: A Guide, co-edited with L Strickland (Oxford University Press, 2020), 173- 205.
‘Leibniz’s Philosophy as a Way of Life?’ in Metaphilosophy. Vol 51 (2020), 259-79.
‘What Is It Like to Be Manic?’ in The Oxonian Review (Feb 2020). Online at http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/what-is-it-like-to- be-manic/.
Paul also published an online interview in the series ‘Dialogues
on Disability’ at Biopolitical Philosophy.com in July https:// biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2020/07/15/dialogues-on-disability- shelley-tremain-interviews-paul-lodge/
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