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Dr Becky Smethurst

Junior Research Fellow

Research theme

  • Astronomy and astrophysics

Sub department

  • Astrophysics

Research groups

  • Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  • Galaxy formation and evolution
  • Hintze Centre for Astrophysical Surveys
rebecca.smethurst@physics.ox.ac.uk
Personal website
  • About
  • Research
  • Prizes, awards and recognition
  • Science Communication
  • Publications

I am a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford. My research is focussed on nearby galaxy evolution studies; particularly the growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the processes responsible for the shut down of star formation in a galaxy. In particular I am interested in how this growth and subsequent feedback occurs in the absence of galaxy mergers. I am also working with SDSS-IV MaNGA data to determine whether feedback from growing SMBHs is responsible for the termination of star formation across the galaxy population, as has long been predicted by theoretical work without observational evidence. Alongside my research I am an enthusiastic science communicator; I run an award-winning astronomy YouTube channel, ‘Dr Becky’, with over 400,000 subscribers and 30 million total views. I was recently awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Winton Award for 2022 for research by a post-doctoral fellow in astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development.

Research interests

Astrophysics
Supermassive Black Holes
Galaxy evolution
Black Hole Growth

Selected publications

Kiloparsec-scale AGN outflows and feedback in merger-free galaxies

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 507:3 (2021) 3985-3997
Rj Smethurst, Bd Simmons, A Coil, Cj Lintott, W Keel, Kl Masters, E Glikman, Gck Leung, J Shanahan, Il Garland

Secularly powered outflows from AGN: the dominance of non-merger driven supermassive black hole growth

Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 489:3 (2019) 4014-4031
RJ Smethurst, BD Simmons, Christopher Lintott, J Shanahan

Supermassive black holes in disk-dominated galaxies outgrow their bulges and co-evolve with their host galaxies

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 470:2 (2017) 1559-1569
BD Simmons, RJ Smethurst, Christopher Lintott

SNITCH: seeking a simple, informative star formation history inference tool

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 484:3 (2019) 3590-3603
Rebecca J Smethurst, M Merrifield, Christopher Lintott, KL Masters, BD Simmons, A Fraser-Mckelvie, T Peterken, M Boquien, RA Riffel, N Drory
132285
See all publications

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