Alumni

We are always keen to receive news from alumni and to provide information on developments at Human Sciences as well as publicising the achievements of our current students. We accept possible contributions from our alumni for our annual newsletter.

We are delighted that two Human Sciences, Alum, Vanessa Berlowtiz and Polly Bream will be giving a talk on Underdogs: Making natural history television with Hollywood, and how Human Sciences helps at the is year’ Meeting Minds alumni weekend. This is taking place in the new Life and Mind Building on Saturday 18^th September at 4.30pm when Vanessa and Polly will speak about creating multi-award-winning comedy-natural history series Underdogs for National Geographic. The series champions less celebrated members of the animal kingdom and combines never-before-filmed footage of animal behaviour with the comedic voice of Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds in a bid to draw new audiences to Natural History. After studying Human Sciences at St John’s (1988-91), Vanessa went on to make over 20 award-winning wildlife shows for the BBC, including Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. She co-founded Wildstar Films in 2008 to push the genre with series like Queens, Sentient with Darren Aronofsky, and Underdogs. Polly studied Human Sciences (2001-2005) at Jesus College before studying for a Masters in Global Health Science (2007-8) at Green Templeton. She is now a writer and producer for television, specialising in natural history, science and adventure. With Wildstar Films, she recently produced Underdogs. .

Human Sciences Alumna, Ushika Kidd, has recently had two articles published in The Guardian on the UN Plastic Treaty and on Plastic contamination concerns in food waste.

Lucy Adams, who read Human Sciences at St Catherine's College between 2017 and 2020 was named in the 2025 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list in the Social Impact Category. Lucy is the founder of Martee AI, a demand forecasting engine for food businesses, enabling them to grow fresh product availability whilst reducing waste, ultimately improving their fresh food offering for consumers. Servicing mostly small and medium-sized businesses, the company uses AI to centralize their data incorporating demand predictors such as weather, transport, and key events with sales data to provide them with more powerful predictive capabilities than they could have without it. Lucy has led the company to raise over $1.1 million in Venture Capital Funding and delivered over 50,000 healthy meals to NHS staff.