Having gained her PhD from Imperial College, London, Jeyaraney Kathirithamby came to St Hugh’s College on a Rhodes Visiting Fellowship. Throughout her time at Oxford, her work has focused on a group of insect parasitoids known as Strepsiptera and the peculiar relationship between these endoparasites and their hosts. She has travelled extensively to collect them and has described several new species.
She co-authored a book on Greek Insects (Duckworth) with her husband Malcolm Davies, which discusses insects not only as described in ancient literature, but also as depicted in ancient Greek art, on vases, finger rings, coins and jewellery.
In 2018 she co-authored a book titled Maria Sibylla Merian Artist, Scientist, Adventurer (Getty) (which won the 2018 Moonbeam Books Gold Award) on the seventeenth-century naturalist, artist, the first female entomologist who went a field trip to Suriname, resulting in a book in 1705 titled, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. King George III acquired one of the first editions of this book (which was hand-painted on vallum) for the Royal Collection. The Bodleian Library, Oxford, has engravings from the books of Maria Sybilla Merina: New Book of Flowers, Caterpillar Book and Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. Maria Sibylla Merian Artist, Scientist, Adventurer was translated to Japanese in 2022.
In August 2025 Jeyaraney Kathirithamby authored a book Insect from Outer Space: Biology of Strepsiptera (Wiley) which gives an account of the insect Strepsiptera that parasitises 7 orders of insects. She collaborates with colleagues on the unusual morphological, genetic and behavioural changes to hosts when parasitised by Strepsiptera.
She is Specialist Chief Editor for Frontiers of Insect Science, and Editor in charge of Strepsiptera for the journal Zootaxa.
For more information regarding Jeyaraney Kathirithamby’s research and publications, please see Department of Biology, Oxford, and Loop.
