The Team
Dr Gabriel Rinaldi, Associate Professor in Molecular Parasitology, University of Oxford
Professor Rinaldi is a medical doctor by training, and practised medicine as a General Practitioner for several years in his home country, Uruguay. He became fascinated with genetics and molecular biology and decided to enrol in a Masters degree in science followed by a PhD degree in Molecular Parasitology. His post-doctoral training was at the George Washington University where he developed protocols for culture and genetic manipulation of parasitic worms. In 2015, he moved to the UK and was appointed Senior Staff Scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and established a research platform for the development of parasite functional genomics projects. In the context of a UKRI - Future Leaders Fellowship awarded in 2022, Professor Rinaldi established his own research programme at Aberystwyth University, Wales. In 2024 he moved to Oxford to be appointed Associate Professor in Molecular Parasitology at the Department of Biology, and Tutorial Fellow in Biology at Christ Church College, University of Oxford.
Professor Rinaldi's research interests focus on the use of cellular and molecular biology approaches coupled with genomics to study Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD). His work is centred on the fundamental biology of helminths, parasite development and interactions with the host. Parasitic worms in the genus Schistosoma are the infectious agents of schistosomiasis, a major NTD that affects more than 250 million people and kill several thousand annually in Low and Middle-Income Countries. Understanding fundamental aspects of the molecular and developmental biology of these parasites and how they interact with the hosts is critical to expose vulnerabilities that can be exploited to develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
Adrian and Heather Rosser, Community Action Ghana, Oxford
Adrian first went to Ghana in 1967 with VSO where he taught St Mary’s Junior Seminary met his wife, Heather. In 1972 Adrian worked a Teacher Training College Northern Nigeria they set up school laboratory.
Adrian returned to Ghana in 2009 and 2010 to work on a toilet building project in the Volta Region. He kept in touch with several people and in 2018 set up a similar project in another village with generous financial support from family and friends. Heather and his daughter Alyrene returned with him in 2019 for the completion of the project and to set up Community Action Ghana as an official charity. Since then Adrian and Heather have returned every year to oversee and support Community Action Ghana’s on going projects including in October 2025, the photography project that formed the basis of the current Ghana Exhibition.
Anthony Dawton and Jim McFarlane
Dawton and McFarlane are a long-standing photography partnership known for documenting humanitarian crises, including refugee camps, and vulnerable communities worldwide. Their images bring an understanding of the long term consequences to those caught up in chronic conflicts.
Dawton is based in London, McFarlane in Melbourne.
Assignments have seen them photographing in Gaza and filming in the Syrian refugee camps in the Bekka Valley, as well as in the Palestinian camps in Beirut. Recently their work has taken them to Bangladesh and Ghana.
They have published several books including: The Children of Niger Silent Witnesses (supported by UNICEF and the Al Madad Foundation), 10 Days In Gaza and, closer to home, NOTLondon: the result of nearly two years photographing the homeless on the streets of London.
In May 2022 Dawton and McFarlane travelled to Bangladesh to photograph the flooding of the Islands near Bogra and the Rohingya refugee camp, the world’s largest. Pictures from this project form the basis of a further book, Edge of Hope and an accompanying exhibition.
In October 2025 Dawton and McFarlane accompanied Community Action Ghana on the photographic project that forms the basis of the current exhibition.