My project examines how women's poetry written in one language and cultural context can travel, via translation, across linguistic, cultural and social boundaries, and speak to audiences in another. I explore this question through the case study of the poems of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), two American poets who were translated into Russian in the Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. Following Godayol, I explore how gender is 'de-codified' and 're-codified' in translation, and how ideas about gender travel transnationally through translation. Such de/recodification is particularly marked in the case of Dickinson and Plath, two Anglo-American poets strongly associated with feminism, but of very different stripes. While Dickinson's self-isolation allowed her to escape the confines facing women at the time, Plath was explicitly feminist, using her poetry to express her frustration with men and gender norms. A century divided Dickinson from Plath, yet Dickinson gained fame only posthumously, meaning that the unlikely duo gained popularity contemporaneously, in the 1960s, when second-wave feminism was emerging. These poets arrived even later to Russia, a society with a radically different gender history. My project asks how Dickinson and Plath speak, mediated by their translators, to the Soviet and Russian experience and its gender norms.

Studying cells in an environment that resembles normal physiology experienced in the body is desirable. In the University of Bristol we have multiple research groups who are interested in kidney, cardiovascular, tissue engineering and cancer cell/organoid biology. We have identified that growing cells in a system that allows dynamic pulsatile stretch that would mimic cardiac output (amplitude and frequency) would be highly beneficial for these groups. We would like to purchase a state-of-the-art stretch system that can simultaneously stretch multiple cell/organoid/tissue samples in an incubator for days to weeks (matching the situation in the body). Furthermore, it has the capability to video the specimens through an incubator located microscope and assess how proteins change in their cellular location through florescent tags. This equipment will be made available to all researchers in the University by being linked to our dedicated Wolfson Imaging Centre. Importantly, there is currently no other equipment that can do this in our University, so this equipment would facilitate an unmet need.

The planet Mercury has an exceptional, massive iron core. Mercury's core accounts for about 70% of its mass, far more than the Earth's core which is only about 30% of its mass. It is unclear how such an extreme iron-enrichment arose. One popular idea is that early in its life Mercury was hit by another large planetary body that stripped it of much of its original rocky mantle. The major argument against this model is that the rocks stripped off of early Mercury would just be spread around its orbit and eventually fall back onto the planet, reversing any iron-enrichment caused by the impact. Recent successes in exoplanet detection have shown that Mercury is not alone. There is a small but significant population of exoplanets with similarly high iron-enrichment across the mass range of rocky planets (0.1-10 times the mass of the Earth). These super-dense, iron-rich planets are known as exo-Mercuries and/or super-Mercuries. The fundamental questions we propose to answer are: how did these Mercury-like planets form? and what is their relation to our own Mercury? We will carry out high resolution, detailed supercomputer simulations of potential Mercury-forming giant impacts to examine how much rocky mantle can be removed. We will then investigate how the rocky debris behaves over millions of years to determine how much returns to the planet and how much is lost. We will apply this same two-stage coupled simulation approach to investigate giant planetary impacts as a mechanism for forming Mercury-like planets outside our solar system. Finally, we will explore an alternative planetary collision scenario and investigate how much the rocky mantle can be eroded by the cumulative effects of many smaller collisions amongst the building blocks of Mercury-like planets. Combined, the results of all our simulations will allow us to answer whether Mercury, and super-Mercury planets, can form via planetary collision processes. These questions are a fundamental part of our understanding of planet formation across the Universe.

The student will be allocated a project after the training element of the course has been completed and the student meets the progression requirements.

Reduction chemistry remains a vital and powerful technique throughout academia and industry in the synthesis of complex organic molecules. Moreover, hydrogenation methods should become more important, as society transitions away from the use of highly reduced petroleum in the chemical industries toward the more oxidised biomass, in which reduction methods are necessary to bring it to application. Despite the importance and prevalence of this reaction to organic synthesis, typical strategies often employ the use of expensive transition metal catalysts, such as iridium or rhodium, in combination with pressurised vessels of explosive hydrogen gas, or, in the case of transfer hydrogenation methods are limited in substrate scope. As a possible alternative, we aim to explore the use of electrochemistry and base metal catalysis to develop hydrogenation methods that are more environmentally benign, inexpensive and selective.