Jonathan Attwood

During WWII, St Hugh's College Oxford was transformed into a Military Hospital for Head Injuries. I’m studying lifelong follow-up data from veterans treated at this hospital to gain unique insights into the long-term effects of brain injuries.

Which brain injuries lead to long-term physical and mental health problems? How does the brain recover from injury to perform cognitive tasks? How do mis-folded proteins spread through the brain to cause dementia after injury?

I’m addressing these questions to advance our understanding of brain injury and to support recovery among those at highest risk, including veterans and athletes. 

I am an Honorary Clinical Teaching Fellow at Oxford Medical School where I've taught for the last five years. I'm also a Medical Tutor at Harris Manchester College and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy UK. 

My teaching experience ranges from anatomy demonstration to resuscitation training, and I now provide regular tutorials, seminars, and lectures in clinical neuroscience and medical humanities. I've co-supervised a number of successful student projects, and have been recognised by Teaching Excellence and 'Tutor of the Term' awards.

I'm the director of a new concussion education course for healthcare students and a concussion awareness workshop for athletes, working with the world's leading concussion charity, Concussion Legacy Foundation.

I graduated from Oxford Medical School in 2017, after an exchange clerkship in neurology at Harvard Medical School and a neurosurgery placement at UCSF.

I got started in research as an honorary fellow while training in internal medicine. In 2021, I gained an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship to combine neuroscience research with a neurology training post in Oxford, and I completed a PGCert in Health Research.

In 2023, I was awarded an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to continue research through a DPhil in clinical neuroscience. My research supervisors are Professor Gabriele De Luca and Professor Edward de Haan, and I am mentored by Professor Margaret Esiri.

I first got into neuroscience by following an interest in the relationship between art and the brain. I performed my first experiment inside a museum, and I believe that the arts can give us valuable insights into how the brain works. For more information please see the Art and Neuroscience Project.