Twelve University of Oxford researchers have been elected as fellows to the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences. They join a cohort of 90 scientific researchers elected this year from around the world who specialise in fields ranging from “astronomy and cancer research to mathematics and biotechnology”.

The election is considered “one of the highest honours in the scientific world, awarded to individuals who have made impactful contributions to knowledge”. 

Sir Paul Nurse, who is the President of the Royal Society, said in an article on the organisation’s website: “I am delighted to welcome this newest group of exceptional scientists to the Fellowship …. Their contributions reflect the highest standards of scientific endeavour. Whether advancing our understanding of vaccines or exploring the transformative potential of mathematics and computation, their work exemplifies the enduring value of curiosity, creativity and rigorous inquiry.” 

Tim Coulson, Professorial Fellow in Zoology and Environmental Sustainability Fellow in Jesus College, was among the Oxford researchers elected to the Royal Society. Coulson told Cherwell that his initial reaction to his election was a combination of joy and shock. He added: “I could never have got this without all the remarkable students and postdocs I have collaborated [with] … Being awarded [this honour] for doing something I enjoy seems almost unbelievable.”

Paul Riley, a Professor of Regenerative Medicine at the British Heart Foundation and Professorial Fellow in Medicine at Jesus College, echoed Coulson’s sentiment of disbelief. Riley told Cherwell that he was “initially surprised and somewhat shocked” by his election, “having gone through the application process for several rounds”. He also told Cherwell that “becoming a fellow of The Royal Society is a huge personal honour, but importantly one that recognises the quality and impact of my group’s science over the years … One agency described becoming a member of the Fellowship as the scientific equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar; so it feels like the culmination of a career in research for which I feel very humble but with a huge sense of pride and satisfaction”. 

Stuart West, a Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Nicholas Kurti Senior Research Fellow at Brasenose College who researches genetic adaptation and social behaviours across various species, highlighted the significance of his team in his election. He told Cherwell: “My election reflects on the team that I have been lucky enough to work with over the years … Obviously, I cannot have all the skills needed to carry out this diversity of work, and so our progress often relies on the expertise of my group members or our collaborators.” He added that the “Department of Biology provides an exceptionally supportive and interactive environment.”

Professor of Genetics in the Department of Biochemistry at Keble College, Rob Klose, also told Cherwell that “the fellowship is a wonderful recognition of the dedication, creativity, and ingenuity of the members of my lab, who consistently amaze me with their discoveries.” Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience Masud Husain added that “it’s a wonderful recognition for 30 years of research dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that underpin human attention, memory and motivation and how it can go wrong in people with brain disorders”.

Something unprecedented is happening in the world of cinema this year. In less than a month, a horror film made by a relatively unknown director in his twenties, on a budget of less than $1 million, has grossed over $224 million at the time of writing. It achieved the rare feat of earning more in its second week and third weeks than its first – the first film to do so since E.T. in 1982. It’s the film on everybody’s lips: Obsession.

Without spoiling too much, Obsession follows a music store employee, played by Michael Johnston, who buys a mysterious ‘One-Wish Willow’, which he uses for a seemingly innocuous end: he wants his crush, played by the incredible Inde Navarrette, to love him “more than anyone in the f*cking world”. This wish, however, results in unexpected and horrifying consequences. What follows is an incredibly effective horror film, with plenty of uncomfortable moments and scares – it’s a film I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend everybody reading to see (but maybe not on a first date). 

What makes Obsession so effective is that its supernatural premise is only a slight exaggeration of something that is recognisably human. The wish begins as a familiar romantic fantasy: to be wanted completely, unquestioningly, and above everyone else. Obsession twists this into something claustrophobic, and makes you question the ethics of what is being done. Johnston is especially good at making Bear both sympathetic and uncomfortable: he never plays him as a monster, which makes his choices more disturbing. Navarrette, the breakout star of the film, has the hard task of playing Nikki as charming, frightening, and pitiable all at once, which she does masterfully.

The film was directed by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old known for his sketch comedy on YouTube and TikTok. He made his feature-length directorial debut in Milk and Serial in 2024, an extremely underrated horror film, available to watch for free on YouTube. That it was made with a budget of only $800 is remarkable. Considering Barker’s comedy background and relative lack of experience in the director’s chair, Obsession is a surprisingly well-made horror movie, with great acting, great pacing, great cinematography, and great writing. Most mainstream horror films tend to be lacking in at least one of these departments, but Obsession succeeds at what it sets out to do – it made me uneasy, and it lingered in my head long after I watched it. So many details only made sense to me after the film had finished, and I found myself continually recognising just how clever this film was days after I had watched it. Soon, I found my Instagram Reels had been taken over by Obsession content – interviews, memes, clips, theories – and I completely fell down the rabbit hole.

I don’t seem to be the only one taken over by Obsession obsession. The film’s continual growth in popularity can be largely attributed, it seems, to word of mouth, since there was a very limited amount of promotion done for it. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it has either seen it and loved it, or heard about it and wanted to see it. It didn’t try to get a Super Bowl ad, or a brand tie-in, but instead relied on its quality to gain the interest of potential viewers. This was one of my favourite qualities about it: it is a film which inherently creates discussion, without being designed for virality. This is done through the ambiguity of some of its themes, which have left people on the internet divided. For those about to see it, I have some questions for you to consider: Is Bear a good person? What really happened to the cat? What would you wish for?

Its success also speaks to a wider hunger for original filmmaking. Obsession does not have a pre-sold cinematic universe behind it, nor any big names. It has spread because people want to talk about it. Its premise is clean, but its moral questions are not, and its ending leaves enough unresolved to send viewers back through the film for clues. That is exactly the kind of engagement Hollywood often tries to manufacture through marketing. Here, it has happened organically. 

What I hope Hollywood learns from this unexpected smash hit is to take more risks on young, passionate filmmakers. Audiences have been missing original stories and fresh voices, and Obsession provides both. We do not need another $100-million-budget Star Wars or Avengers spin-off. We do not need another remake, sequel, or nostalgic cash-grab. We need creative risks, and the hope that it is possible for creative young people to break into this industry without needing to use a One-Wish Willow themselves. 

Obsession is a taste of what the next generation of filmmakers looks like. Not only is it a great movie, but it is evidence that it is possible for Hollywood to change.

Sporting knee-length hair tied into a bun with a colourful scarf and married to a flame juggler, Jessica James isn’t your typical quant trader. A Christ Church PhD Physics alum and now Managing Director at Commerzbank, James speaks with levity and self-assuredness, a rare duality in the finance sector. 

While many from my cohort are making the jump from physics to finance, it was more than unconventional for James in ‘94: “It was absolutely weird of me to do so. I was trying to write up my thesis and thinking I was unemployable, and my supervisor, Patrick Sanders, came into the office.” He had received this “funny letter”, anticipating James’ potential interest. It was from the First National Bank of Chicago, who were moving into the area of financial derivatives and looking for PhD Maths or Physics students. She was called onto the trading floor to explain her research to various traders and salespeople, before being flown to Chicago for another interview. “Business class!”, she whispers in mock awe. 

Physics and finance may share certain mathematical foundations, but there are clear differences between the two worlds. “Physics is about studying the foundations of the universe. Finance is about studying a man-made system that doesn’t always behave how you think it will. I’ve always enjoyed it. It’s fun. It’s fast-moving.”

Ambiguity in jargon is another key difference. When somebody in science uses the term force, its meaning is generally agreed upon. When someone talks about yield or convexity in finance, they could be defined in very different ways, depending on the context and the speaker. “The big change is the lack of precision of the vocabulary. It’s easy to think you understand something in finance, but when terms are ill-defined, you might not. Physics is mostly a zero-bullshit zone”, she says.

“Finance tends to focus on the future and the now, and data is, fundamentally, historical. Yet it’s a gold mine – especially today, when sophisticated analysis is increasingly used to uncover trends and behaviours – however, it’s often deleted, forgotten, or ignored.”  It’s always a red flag when someone says “but this time it’s different”, be it an ex-partner or a teetotal friend, James explains that this is particularly true in finance. “It’s like the climate”, she tells me. “The climate can fluctuate in unexpected ways, and so can the market, right? Just because there hasn’t been an ice age recently doesn’t mean they won’t return in their time.”

While at school, James was the only one doing Physics and Chemistry: “15 years in a convent school put me off God forever. But I understand why science and religion are often so conflated”, she says, explaining that she views both as trying to better understand the rules of the universe. As the sole woman in many rooms, including a weekend away as the Managing Director at Citibank, James has never minded being the odd one out: “I don’t care if they think I’m different. I was smarter than most of them.” I fully believe her. “It is tricky being a woman in finance. How many technical disciplines are there where you could say that women are equal? And, you shouldn’t have to be tough and immune to remarks that shouldn’t be made. But, it never really bothered me.”

While traditional routes into banking are competitive, James stresses the importance of getting into the right place and avoiding a mundane job. Her advice? Get in early via the internship-turned-graduate-scheme pathway. “Oxford and Physics give you the ability to think critically and believe in your own opinion and your own knowledge”, she says. “This helped me to thoughtfully reflect on challenges and gave me the courage to recognise that if something felt off, it probably was – and it didn’t mean I lacked ability.” This mindset has been the cornerstone of James’ career.

“But, the one thing that is the hardest, but the most important, is to understand where you fit into the organisation.” She tells me that when fixing code, processing data, or completing spreadsheets, we should be asking: why? Where is your organisation making money, and why does your job exist? It’s important to not be stuck in a bubble, James stresses, not just in finance but in any job. This understanding will push you to find originality in the way that you work, and perhaps do it better than other organisations: “Knowledge is power, and often the knowledge that is the most powerful in an organisation is who does what and why.” She believes in keeping a foot in more than one world, and, thereby, tapping into more opportunities.

“I had never seen five o’clock from the front before, only from behind.” The crazy hours in finance aren’t a recent development, although James prioritised her hours off work just as much as those she spent on the trading floor. Her secret was to not break stride and make no eye contact with anybody as she got off work. She quickly realised that “you’ve got to set boundaries, you’ve got to set limits”.

James has been a pioneer in finding probability-weighted foreign exchange market trading strategies. She has launched products based on trading signals, which she explained as buying the trading rules that came from looking at historical data. Amidst the global turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis, these instruments performed better than many others. 

She also coined the term rollercoaster bonds: long-term bonds that become highly sensitive to changes in interest rates, similar to the way rollercoasters must consider forces other than velocity and acceleration. Here, rising interest rates can significantly impact the value of century (100-year) bonds, like some sold by Oxford University. While century bonds sound reliable and safe, she showed they would lose much of their value if interest rates rose out of the near-zero range of the pre-COVID world – and they did.

Penning several financial maths texts is yet another achievement of James’ career. She is quick to warn, however, against getting her confused with an author of the same name who writes, apparently, racy novels as opposed to those about the stock market. 

Talking to James, it is clear that she enjoys devoting her time to finance and academia. After all, she is a pension trustee at Citibank and Commerzbank, on the Institute of Physics council and a Visiting Professor at Oxford and University College London. However, reflecting on her time as an Oxford undergraduate, she reminisces on her fun side. She recalls her first encounter with Professor Kurti: a pioneer in the art of gastronomy. He was about to give a lecture at Manchester University titled The Joy of Cooking, but was startled to realise as he entered the lecture theatre that someone had amended the title on the chalk board to The Joy of Sex. James bumped into him years later in the Clarendon laboratory and confessed, luckily being met with laughter. 

She notes the same Brasenose dinner between exams and results as one of her favourite memories of Oxford, where “everything was possible. Nobody’s wave function had collapsed”. Her message to students? Love every minute of Oxford for how fantastic it is. But also: “Take pride in yourself. Take pride in your accomplishments. You got here, you stuck it [out]. Not many people can do that.”