Dale is a Careers and Employability Consultant for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. His role involves working directly with students via email, Skype and telephone. He also manages careers forums, delivers workshops and creates content for the CES website and SSGS study sites. His favourite part of the role is listening to students’ stories and supporting them with their career planning.
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Dr Damon Miller is Manager for Information and Communications for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), having joined the Faculty of Arts in 2008. He has experience of copywriting and content production, as well as HE and curriculum administration.
As part of the FASS Communications and Web Team, Damon is responsible for social media; online and print prospectuses; publications; curriculum promotion; events (including seminar and conference promotion); broadcast information; student engagement; and internal communications. He also leads on communications for the FASS Equality and Diversity Team.
Daniel McCulloch is a Lecturer in Criminology and Social Policy at The Open University. He is currently the co-chair of the production of DD315, and will chair DD315 in 23J. He has worked on various OU modules, including DD212, DD801 and DD804. His research interests concern topics to do with homelessness, criminal justice and Deafness, and participatory research methods.
Daniel joined the OU as a Student Experience Manager in February 2021. After completing his first degree and spending seven years working in academic publishing, Daniel had a career change to become a teacher. Coupling his love for travel and his interest in Eastern Europe, he moved to Poland and completed a Cambridge University CELTA in Kraków before settling in Warsaw for 10 years. During this time, he primarily worked with companies teaching business English but also with academic publishers as a writer, copyeditor and voice-over artist, providing and recording dialogue and text for school publications. In 2015 he returned to the UK and studied for his PGDipEd and MA (Teaching in Lifelong Learning) at the University of Huddersfield. Alongside his studies, he taught international students English skills for university study and latterly worked in FE with ESOL students.
Dan Sarkozi is a retired boxer, awarded Boxing News Comeback of the year 2019 after suffering a stroke due to a PFO heart defect. He has competed in sixty-five bouts, fifteen were professional.
His latest venture, into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, saw him crowned Grace Barra UK champion in 2019 and IBJJF European quarter finalist in 2023.
He was a Tae Kwon Do black belt as a junior, and also, Sarkozi holds a 500-hour Yoga Acharya qualification. He has taught boxing, practical health and Yoga, all over the world. He was also founding coach and mentor of the Empire Fighting Chance charity in the UK.
As an advocate for a holistic approach to health, and acknowledging the needs of the individual, Sarkozi is an inspiring public speaker, keynoting at venues such as the Excel London. Sarkozi is fluent in British Sign Language and currently studying an Open Degree at The Open University, specializing in literature.
Dan Weinbren has worked in Arts and Social Sciences since the last century. He has contributed teaching materials to six modules, taught on another four modules and written a dozen chapters in academic books, 16 academic journal articles and eight books. His most recent book is ‘The Open University. A history’, Manchester University Press.
Danny established the Black Sheep Collective with Georgia Tillery (www.blacksheepcollective.co.uk/).
Black Sheep is a social enterprise working in arts and culture undertaking performance-based work and participatory community arts projects. They train new and emerging artists and provide opportunities for real experience in the creative industries working alongside professionals in both the corporate realm and the public realm as well as devising their own projects. They run a coffee shop and gallery called Bar Bar Black Sheep that generates revenue for the organisation, which has been established as a Community Interest Company (CIC). Black Sheep is based in Milton Keynes.
Darren Jones is the Partnerships Manager for the Open University in Wales. His job is to develop partnerships across Wales with other organisations and to help bring the opportunity of OU study to even more learners.
Dasha Ivkina MacDonald is the Head of Student Success in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) at The Open University. She identifies and recommends improvements to support student retention and progression.
Dasha joined the OU in 2009 and worked as a Senior Manager (Strategy and Communications) and managed several research projects. Prior to joining the OU, Dasha worked as an international Learning and Development Consultant in the IT sector.
Dasha hold a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor’s degree (Hons) in Business Studies with Economics. Dasha is a qualified Prince2 Practitioner and Six Sigma Green Belt.
David has been an Arts tutor for 20 years, teaching at all levels of the OU, and is also director of the Day for Night Theatre Company. He graduated from the OU in the 1970s and then studied film, drama and performance at post-graduate level, first at Oxford and then New York University.
I am a Research Support Librarian, whose work currently focuses on quantitative research indicators (bibliometrics), open access publishing, designing and delivering training sessions, and outreach with research students. I enjoy cooking, reading (with a nascent interest in philosophy) and spending time with my son.
David Johnson completed a law degree and MA in English at the University of Cape Town, and then in 1992 a PhD at Sussex University, before joining the Open University in 1999. His interests lie principally in Postcolonial Literature, and especially Southern African literature, and he has written about 40 units of Open University teaching material on subjects ranging from Shakespeare and Goethe to Ursula Le Guin and Abdulrazak Gurnah.
David is a block leader at the DD317 module, responsible for the weeks on 'Threats and fears' that engage with the relationship between social psychology and psychoanalysis.
He is a social psychologist by training and is mainly interested in the relationship between violence and meaning-making. In terms of the module, this means looking at instances of social-political conflict and trying to understand them as emerging from (abnormal, dysfunctional, unhappy) social relationships.
David has been at the Open University since February 2015.
David is undertaking a PhD on Mapping part of the planet Mercury and studying the volcanic processes that have occurred over the planet’s history. He started his PhD in 2017, before that he worked in Liberia for six years as an exploration geologist after completing an integrated masters in geology at the University of Southampton. David loves taking his understanding of the geology of one planet and applying it to another, learning how the processes on vastly different worlds are often very similar.
David Pilling is a senior advisor in the STEM SST. He’s been with the OU for a little over two years and finds it a privilege to play a part in so many students’ personal stories towards gaining a new qualification. The OU has such a diverse make-up of students, from all over the world, making David’s job of being a point of contact a genuine pleasure. He says that no two stories are the same. What we learn from our students is that they are incredibly motivated people.
David G. Robertson is a lecturer in religious studies at the Open University, and co-founder of the religious studies project. He researches new religions, conspiracy theories and other weird stuff.
David loves comics, progressive rock and forests. He is the author of UFOs, the New Age and Conspiracy Theories: Millennial Conspiracism (2016, Bloomsbury). Twitter @d_g_robertson
David Rothery is Professor of Planetary Geosciences in the Department of Physical Sciences. Previously, between 1994 and 2011, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences (transferring to the Planetary and Space Sciences Division of the new Department of Physical Sciences in August 2011), and before that was a lecturer here. From 1999 to 2004, he was Director of Teaching and Geosciences Programme Director. He has also been Leader of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) Commission on Remote Sensing, and a member of the PPARC Solar System Advisory Panel and the BepiColombo Oversight Committee.
David Rowland is Professor of Music and Director of Taught Postgraduate at The Open University. He was Dean of Arts from 2007 to 2014. As a performer on the harpsichord, organ and early piano, his early research was on the performance history of early keyboard instruments. He then became interested in the relationship between music and commerce and has published extensively on the way in which composers and publishers relate to the markets, especially in late Georgian England. His work shows that composers were far from autonomous beings, composing according to the demands of their audiences and those who paid them. More recently he has lead a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council which aims to gather evidence of personal listening and to incorporate those accounts into the Listening Experience Database (see the project’s website http://www.listeningexperience.org/).
Dr David Scott works at The Open University and is a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the module chair for DD105 Introduction to criminology. David has published 15 books, including Why Prison? (2013) and Against Imprisonment (2018), and more than 100 book chapters and articles. He is co-founder of the journal Justice, Power and Resistance and a former coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, the most established critical criminology forum in the world today.
Dean completed a law degree before going on to complete the (what was at the time) Bar Vocational Course and was then Called to the Bar. He then worked in a firm of solicitors before cross-qualifying as a Solicitor, practising in that capacity for several years. Dean was later an advocate for a legal regulatory body dealing with professional misconduct matters before a tribunal panel, before joining the Open University where he is faculty lead on academic conduct investigations, as well as, separately, an Associate Lecturer on W111.
Debbie originally trained in horticulture before taking this skill, along with crafts and music, into occupational therapy settings. Her first degree was achieved part time over seven years with Brunel University followed by teaching qualifications also studied part time. Her MEd was part time with The Open University and her research area was adult learning and widening participation. She also teaches, and has completed training in, goldwork embroidery.
Deborah Brunton is member of the History department at the Open University and led the production of A223 Early Modern Europe: society and culture 1500-1780.
Now that the module is almost complete she is looking forward to spending time on Orkney, finishing a textbook on the history of medicine in Britain, and getting back to her research into the mucky world of drains, dung, public lavatories and other aspects of public health in nineteenth-century Scotland.
Originally from Canada, Deb joined The Open University in 2007 after completing a PhD at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Prior to this, she undertook two undergraduate degrees and an MA at the University of Saskatchewan, an institution with which she continues to maintain academic links.
Deborah is acting Assistant Director Widening Access and Success Services (WASS). This means she is responsible for the department supporting disabled students, students in prisons and secure units; and students attending residential schools. WASS are at the heart of the OU’s mission to be open to ‘people, places, methods and ideas’, and this is something that Deborah is passionate about.
Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University and an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has written Art and Emotion (OUP, 1998), Introducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies (Routledge, 2013); Fiction and Narrative (OUP, 2014); and Empathy (Polity, 2017). He is the author of numerous articles in aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. His directs, with Helen Frowe, the UK Government funded project, Heritage in War and edits, with Paloma Atencia-Linares, The British Journal of Aesthetics.
Derek Sheills is Head of Curriculum Management for the Faculty of Arts. Derek manages the area that supports the production and presentation of all of the faculty’s qualifications and modules. Derek is also an associate lecturer, currently for DD102 Introducing the Social Sciences, a role he has thoroughly enjoyed for 16 years.
Devendra joined The Open University Business School in 2004 as a Lecturer in Finance at the Centre for Financial Management. He was previously employed in India at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Gujarat University and the Tolani Institute of Management Studies.
He has been a course team member in various accounting and finance modules taught at undergraduate and post graduate levels. These include Financial accounting (B291), Financial strategy (B821), Issues in international finance and investment (B854). As Masters Programme Director since 2011, Devendra has led the redevelopment of the Open University's MBA programme, and the development of two specialist masters MSc Finance and MSc Human Resources Management.
Diane Butler joined The Open University in 1995 from a background in secondary schools and FE. She was appointed first as an Associate Lecturer tutoring at Masters level in science education, and then as a Staff Tutor in the Faculty of Science (now STEM). In previous years, the main focus of Diane’s teaching has been the delivery of interdisciplinary teaching and she chaired several Level 1 science modules in production and presentation. She is currently a member of several module teams in Life and Health sciences including S294 Cell Biology and the currently ‘in production’ Level 2 module in Health Sciences.
Donna joined The Open University in 2000 and is now Senior Lecturer in the history of nineteenth-century Britain, interested in the impact of industrialisation and capitalism on everyday life. She is particularly interested in the people and things that don’t fit into conventional historical accounts such as working-class entrepreneurs and middle-class social investigators who struggle to explain what they see.
Donna enjoys interdisciplinary teaching and research because she likes to see how new perspectives are created when different sources and approaches interact and because she enjoys collaboration and learning from others.
Dr Andreas Vossler is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and a trained systemic family therapist who started working for the OU more than ten years ago. His research is broadly interested in intimate relationships, including the way technology impacts on them, and the therapeutic work with couples and families. He is lead editor of Mad or Bad? A Critical Approach to Counselling and Forensic Psychology (2017) and co-editor of The Counselling and Psychotherapy Research Handbook (2014) and Understanding Counselling and Psychotherapy (2010; all published by Sage Publishers).
Astrophysicist, Dr Jo Jarvis has a job title that barely fits on her business card; in essence she is a public engagement officer working with the School of Physical Sciences (SPS) and she is passionate about what she does.
Her fascination with astronomy began at the age of six and by the age of 16 she was Editor of the Bedford Astronomical Society newsletter. She went on to run her own company Astronomy Tuition which was dedicated to providing education for everyone from nurseries to Adult Education.
Jo came into the OU over 6 years ago working as an Associate Lecturer (AL) on 3 different modules and she remains a topic specialist on one module today.
Judith is an enthusiastic, motivated and experienced research scientist with a diverse skill set and career spanning industry and academia. She is a microbiologist and her current research interests are in immunoassay development, the detection of aerosols and novel antimicrobial agents from common churchyard lichens. She is the STEM training lead in the OU Graduate School, which brings together in one place, a programme of core training materials from across our most excellent world-class University. It holds a rich resource of F2F and online materials that new Post Graduate Researchers can call upon to get started with their Research. Everything from planning research, writing skills, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, ethics and Intellectual property issues, managing wellbeing to audio visual skills training.
Dr Lee John Curley graduated in July 2014 from Edinburgh Napier University with a BSc (hons) degree in Psychology. In January 2015, he began his PhD in juror decision making, which utilised theory from both forensic and cognitive psychology. During his PhD, he actively published several papers, mostly focusing on the areas of juror decision making, decision science, and eyewitness testimony. In addition to academic papers, he wrote blogs (such as the British Society of Criminology), published in media outlets (both the Conversation and the Scotsman), presented at public engagement events (the Edinburgh Science Festival), and presented at three international conferences during this time. He submitted his PhD in January 2018 and graduated in July 2018. Since graduating, Lee has continued to publish academic articles and write for media outlets and has given an invited talk to Edinburgh’s Faculty of Advocates.
Dr Natalie Canning is a co-director of the Children’s Research Centre at the OU, part of the Early Childhood team and works as an area lead for Childhood and youth on the professional doctorate programme. Her background is in social work using playwork philosophies and practice to support young children experiencing emotional and socio-economic challenges. This influences her approach to teaching and research which include professional development of Early Childhood professionals in relation to quality practice; self-motivated learning and children’s play, curiosity and creativity. Her publications on children’s empowerment are significant in recognising how children are empowered through child-initiated, social play and the implications of empowerment for future learning and development.
Sarah Crafter is a Senior Lecturer in Developmental and Cultural Psychology. Her research is broadly interested in young people’s migration experiences and how they impact on everyday lives, particularly their transitions to adulthood. She wrote a book in 2019 titled Developmental transitions: Exploring stability and change through the lifespan.
Helen Lockett is the Director of the OpenSTEM Labs and a Senior Lecturer in Engineering. The OpenSTEM Labs are the Open University's remote and online laboratories that allow our students to undertake practical learning wherever they are. Helen provides strategic leadership for the labs, helping to keep the Open University at the forefront of remote practical learning.
Helen is a Chartered Engineer with more than 20 years’ experience of teaching and researching engineering design and manufacturing. She is particularly interested in teaching engineering from a practical perspective, helping students to develop the skills they need to be effective engineers in their future careers.
Dudley returns to Student Hub Live with wide-eyed enthusiasm and an insatiable love for both words and synthesisers. Working as a Senior Advisor in the Faculty of Business and Law’s Student Support Team, Dudley and his colleagues are here to ensure our students never feel like they don’t have someone to go to when they need any form of advice or guidance. Dudley joined us at the OU to continue working with and supporting students, which has been a passion of his for a long while, as he wishes to help all those that he can with their studies.
Dr Duncan Banks was born and brought up in Malaysia where he spent most of his early childhood. During his teenage years his parents taught him that anything was possible if you only worked hard enough. He took full advantage of everything that the local charities and sponsors could fund, winning a flying scholarship, learning to glide and sail and obtaining qualifications in these areas. By the age of 14 he was a lifesaving instructor and county swimmer. He studied Physiology at Leeds followed by a PhD in Neuroscience at Sheffield University. He has worked as a post-doc at Birmingham and Bristol and has worked as an academic at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Medical School, King’s College London and National University Singapore and for the last 18 years at the Open University where he has been involved in many of the health-related courses. His has researched on pain, Alzheimer’s disease and currently in wearable and implantable technologies.
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