Our People
The Centre for Equity & Inclusion is an ambitious collaboration between University of Sheffield researchers, students, and partner organisations invested in racial justice.
Centre staff
Dr Alex Rajinder Mason
Project Manager
Alex is the Project Manager for the Centre for Equity & Inclusion. His research focuses on racial inequalities in Higher Education and university partnership work, and he has extensive experience collaborating with racial justice organisations on arts-based projects. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Centre and supporting co-directors with their respective strands of the project, Alex will foster collaborations with external partners and play a key role in the Centre’s knowledge exchange and community archive work.
Dr Bobby Nisha
Centre Co-Director
Bobby is a Senior University Teacher in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, whose research focuses on the psychological impacts of urban design and the use of immersive virtual reality to understand how people experience, understand, interpret and navigate through spaces. Bobby is a trained leader of SEED (a sector-leading equality, diversity and inclusion professional programme for university staff members) and helped design and deliver the UK SEED Project at the University of Sheffield. Bobby will lead the Centre’s bespoke training programme for University staff members and postgraduate researchers.
Dr Nicola Hemmings
Centre Co-Director
Nicola is a Research Fellow in the School of Biosciences, Faculty of Science, with experience of developing widening participation initiatives for young people from marginalised backgrounds. She will provide general oversight for the Centre, including planning, logistics, finance, and events, as well as developing future funding bids.
Dr Seth Mehl
Centre Co-Director
Seth is a Lecturer in the Digital Humanities Institute, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, with expertise in co-production and community-led methods, including community archiving around historical and present-day inequalities. He will lead on the Centre’s knowledge exchange and community archive programmes, in close collaboration with Dr Alex Mason.
Meesha Warmington
Centre Co-Director
Meesha is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education. Her research focuses on the intersection between cognition, language and literacy in multilingual individuals across the lifespan. Meesha’s work also focuses on intersectional inequalities in healthy ageing and multimorbidity and she is the Co-lead of the Inequality and Intersectionality workstream in the Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield. She is also involved in institutional research which is focused on understanding cultural awareness in institutional leadership through the lived experiences of BAME staff and students. Meesha will lead on strategy for the Centre’s mentorship scheme and project evaluation.
Dr Tony Williams
Centre Co-Director
Tony is Director of the Doctor of Educational & Child Psychology programme. He has expertise in educational psychology and psychoanalytic concepts theory and psychodynamically informed practice. Related areas of interest include group dynamics, conceptions of mental health and emotional wellbeing, case study research and the use of reflexive and interpretative research methods. Tony has a continued interest in minority students’ experience of university and will lead the Centre’s provision for postgraduate wellbeing and support.
Our partners
Centre associates
Dr Nadena Doharty
Former Centre Co-Director
Nadena is a Lecturer in Education, Culture, and Childhood, in the School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences. She specialises in the intersections of race, social class, and gendered inequalities in education, and has a strong track record of designing and leading inclusive change initiatives such as workshops on unconscious bias, racial microaggressions and anti-racist working practices. Nadena was critical in the co-conceptualisation of the Centre and development of its professional development programme.
Professor Aarti Iyer
Former Centre Co-Director
Aarti is a social and political psychologist in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science, with extensive research experience investigating individual and institutional responses to social inequality. She has served as Department Director of EDI, Co-Lead of the Faculty of Science Race Equality Strategy, and Founding Director of the UoS BAME Staff Mentoring Scheme. Aarti was critical in the co-conceptualisation of the centre and the developments of its mentorship scheme.
Dalbinder Kular
Mentoring Scheme Induction Designer & Facilitator
Dalbinder is a Sheffield born and based writer, workshop creator, facilitator and mentor specialising in creative writing arts for liberation and healing. She has an MSC in Therapeutic Writing. Her debut poetry book (un)interrupted tongues explores the impact of educational racism as a teenage and her recovery through creativity, nature and ancestral wisdoms. She works as a Specialist Mental Health Mentor and has a 20 year background in Social Work. Dalbinder will be developing and delivering training for the Centre’s mentoring scheme, drawing on feminist, anti-racist and decolonial methodologies.
Joyce Nabutse
Administrative Assistant
Joyce is a BSc Biomedical Science graduate, class of 2022. She joined the University of Sheffield in September 2019 as an international student, and went onto become a member of the Biomedical Science Student Staff Committee during the 2020-21 academic year, Inclusion Officer for the East African Society and Africa Representative for the International Students’ Committee. As Administrative Assistant for the Centre during its development phase, Joyce was critical in designing the various promotional tools needed to engage students and prospective future partners.
Ronald Mutambirwa
Centre Chats - Co Facilitator
Ronald is supporting the Centre by co-facilitating Centre Chats that take place throughout the academic year.
Ronald is a Registered Mental Health Nurse and Cognitive Behavioural psychotherapist. He has 20 years of experience working in the field of mental health working with adults between 18-65. He qualified as a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist at the University of Derby in 2021. He has worked within the NHS across a variety of settings as a mental health nurse and as a specialist mental health practitioner within the community working within multidisciplinary teams.
Angela Barrows
Centre Chats - Co Facilitator
Angela is supporting the Centre by co-facilitating Centre Chats that take place throughout the academic year.
Angela has worked in statutory and community-based settings, including NHS GP’s practice, multi disciplinary teams with social workers, police, youth offending teams, social enterprises and charity organisations. Her experience includes working with refugees and asylum seekers using interpreters, working with Mothers Against Crime (MAC) project working with African Caribbean young people affected by gun crime in Nottingham. Angela worked for Right Here Sheffield (2010 – 2013) a national pilot project set up to address the mental health needs and services for young people aged 16 – 25 years.