Balliol is inviting applications from established scholars of international standing to short-term visiting positions as Oliver Smithies Visiting Research Fellows and Lecturers.
The appointments commemorate Professor Oliver Smithies (Balliol 1943 and Honorary Fellow 2004–2017), joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2007. They carry with them an obligation to give two public lectures or other academic events, which are funded by his generous benefaction.
At the time of his death in 2017 Professor Smithies was Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, before which he had a distinguished scientific career. That and his Nobel Prize-winning work with Mario Capecchi and Sir Martin Evans ‘for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells’ are described here.
Previous Oliver Smithies Fellows and Lecturers are listed here. The most recent appointments have been Professor Marisa Fuentes, Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellow (History) 2019/2020, and Dr Liza Blake, Oliver Smithies Lecturer and Visiting Fellow 2019/2020. Professor Fuentes, who is Presidential Term Chair in African American History and Associate Professor at Rutgers University, is one of the co-curators of Balliol Library’s Slavery in the Age of Revolution exhibition and contributor to the accompanying film. Dr Blake, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto (whose visit was postponed by the pandemic) will be giving her second lecture on 2 December 2021.
Please share the advertisements for these appointments with any scholar from outside the UK who might be interested in an opportunity to pursue their own research as a member of Balliol College.