Dr Zoe Clarke, Henslow Research Fellow
In a single lake in Vermont, a population of catfish were found to be growing tumours which were related to each other, a hallmark sign of a transmissible cancer. The discovery is barely a few years old and the research paper has only just been published. The story has already picked up traction, with coverage from major news organisations including the New York Times, CBC and Forbes. It's this puzzle that brings Zoe Clarke to Cambridge as Selwyn's incoming Henslow Research Fellow.
"It's kind of a little mystery we're trying to answer some really basic questions about," she says of the disease, which she'll research in the University's Department of Veterinary Medicine.
Zoe has a life-long love of data science. She studied biology and music at Queen's University in Ontario, then took a PhD in computational biology at the University of Toronto, working on liver cancer in woodchucks.
"I realised I really missed the ecology and evolution side of things, which brings me here," she said. Her current work crosses between medicine and evolutionary biology.
The Henslow Research Fellowship, sponsored by the Cambridge Philosophical Society, is a three-year post supporting early-career researchers. Zoe takes her position on 1 October. Alongside her research, she will teach for up to six hours a week.
Zoe will become unmissable at Selwyn: She plays tuba, has already joined a Cambridge brass band and owns a huge cargo bike painted like a Holstein cow.
Dr Chris Jones, Fellow
Shelves of unexplored Buddhist materials represent potential in changing how we see the world, according to Dr Chris Jones, who will join Selwyn’s fellowship this year.
"We're drowning in Buddhist materials," said Chris. "Shelves of things, hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, which have not been systematically studied."
Written in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan, his career has traced the intellectual and social history of Buddhism, with a particular focus on India.
He was an undergraduate at Cambridge and trained mainly at Oxford, with a spell in Japan, before returning to Selwyn in 2019 to create the university's first permanent position in Buddhist studies, ensuring that Sanskrit teaching is offered at Cambridge.
After a professorship in Vienna, Chris is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies, based in the Faculty of Divinity from September 2026. The university will offer its first tripos paper devoted solely to Buddhist studies, open to students of theology, Asian studies and anthropology alike from autumn 2027.
For students, he says the appeal lies in how differently Buddhism frames the basic questions of existence, a tradition with fundamentally different foundations to Judeo-Christianity. He said: “It is the opportunity to discover something radically different and bring a different lens to human existence."
By coincidence, Selwyn is also home to Dr Jonathan Duquette, bye-fellow in South Asian Religions and Philosophies and the university's only other Sanskrit specialist. Chris has long collaborated with Professor Richard Bowring, Japanologist, former master and Emeritus Fellow.
Read more here: Historic appointment in Buddhist Studies first of its kind at Cambridge | School of Arts and Humanities