About me

My designation at Oxford University is Professor of Economics (in the Department of Economics), where I lecture and research on Development Economics, Health Economics, and Microeconomics, and supervise graduate students.  After having served as Official and Tutorial Fellow in Economics since January 1974, my designation at the College is Emeritus Fellow from October 2013.

Research

I am a development microeconomist, and have done research and published articles and books on economic inequality and poverty, undernutrition, human development, health equity, human resources for health, microeconomic theory and other subjects in economics and health.  My latest book is entitled The Cost of Inaction: Case Studies from Rwanda and Angola, Harvard University Press, 2012. 

Teaching

I teach inorganic chemistry at St. Catherine's.

About me

I was an undergraduate student at the University of Bristol before coming to Oxford in 1976 to work as a graduate student with Tony Cheetham, himself an alumnus of the College. I then spent four years as a CEGB Research Fellow at St. Catherine's before taking up a lecturership at Leeds University in 1984. I returned to the College as a Tutorial Fellow in 1989. I was given the title of Professor of Chemistry in 2002; I had previously held visiting professorships in France at Caen (1988) and Bordeaux (1995).

Research and graduate supervision

My research, undertaken with the help of graduate students, lies in the field of solid-state chemistry, with an emphasis on the relationship between the crystal structure and the electrical and magnetic properties of mixed-metal oxides and nitrides, for example La₁₈Li₈ Fe₅O₃₉ and Fe_1.25Pt_0.75Mo₃N.

Recent Publications

Structural chemistry and spin-glass behaviour of Nd₁₈Li ₈Fe₄TiO₃₉. N. Thammajak, P. D. Battle, F. Grandjean, G. J. Long, and S. Ramos, J. Solid State Chemistry 187, 75 (2012)

High-temperature redox chemistry of Pr _0.5Sr_1.5Cr_0.5Mn _0.5O_4-δ investigated in situ by neutron diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy under reducing and oxidizing gas flows. M. Bahout, F. Tonus, C. Prestipino, D. Pelloquin, T. Hansen, E. Fonda and P. D. Battle J. Mater. Chem. 22, 10560 (2012)

Magnetic properties of Fe₂GeMo₃N; an experimental and computational study. P. D. Battle, L. A. Sviridov, R. J. Woolley, F. Grandjean, G. J. Long, C. R. A. Catlow, A. A. Sokol, A. Walsh and S. M. Woodley J. Mater. Chem. 22, 15606 (2012)

La₃Ni₂SbO₉ - a relaxor ferromagnet. P. D. Battle, S. I. Evers, E. C. Hunter and M. Westwood Inorganic Chemistry 52, 6648 (2013)

Teaching

I lecture widely across the period 1509-1832: recent courses include Shakespearean Tragedy, Swift, Defoe, Four Types of Gothic, English Literature and the French Revolution, and The Dunciad and its Enemies.  I do not give undergraduate tutorials.

Biography and Research

I read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge.  I then taught at the University of Leeds before becoming a fellow and tutor of Jesus College, Oxford.  In 2002 I was elected to the Warton chair.  In 2009 I was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

My doctoral research was on the historian Edward Gibbon, on whom I have published two monographs, and whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I edited for Penguin.  I have also published on Burke, Johnson, and Swift.  Two recent publications are a study of Elizabethan historiography and historical drama, Divinity and State (Oxford, 2010); and an edition of Gulliver’s Travels (Cambridge, 2012).

For a full cv and list of publications together with reviews, see my profile on academia.edu.

Graduate Supervision

I am happy to consider doctoral students whose topics fall within the long eighteenth century.  Students whom I have recently supervised have worked on the English deists, economics and eighteenth-century poetry, and satire and science in the long eighteenth century.

Teaching

For undergraduates, I offer tutorials primarily in general philosophy, the philosophy of cognitive science, and ethics. I also lecture on the philosophy of cognitive science.

Research

My research focuses on the role questions play in cognition, particularly in attention, reasoning, and decision making. In a nutshell, I argue that how we treat questions and answers accounts both for persistent irrationalities in reasoning and for our capacity to learn how to reason correctly. There is much to gain through links between the conceptual insights and formalisms developed in philosophy on the one hand and empirical psychological data on the other. We work on further strengthening those links in the Laboratory for the Philosophy and Psychology of Rationality and Decision (LPPRD – “Leopard”).

The link to my personal website is here.

Graduate supervision

I regularly offer graduate seminars in the philosophy of cognitive science, mind, and language. I also work with graduate students and post-docs on projects in these areas.

About me

I have been a Fellow of St. Catherine's since 2009, and I serve as Director of Studies for the Biomedical Sciences course at our college.  I am also an Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, where I investigate the neural basis of hearing.

Teaching

I tutor Biomedical Science, Medicine and Psychology students at St Catherine's College in topics spanning Neuroscience, Cellular Physiology, Statistics and Critical Analysis.

Research

My research involves decoding neurons' action potential responses to sounds, and using 2-photon microscopy to observe the spatial organization of these neural responses throughout the brain. Furthermore, we train animals on behavioural tasks to measure how they hear sounds, and how their perception compares to human hearing. The aim of this work is to understand how the auditory cortex represents the features of sound that listeners use to communicate and recognize objects in the world around them.

Research Supervision

I have supervised the dissertation projects of many undergraduate and graduate students in my lab, and welcome new opportunities for Catz students to take part in our research.