Biography to follow

I am the Senior Manager Research Development. I lead a team which delivers centrally provided support to academics and Faculty staff in their endeavours to secure external research funding.

My particular speciality is with European funding which has fostered an interest in language and I am attempting to learn German. More recently I have become involved with the Global Challenges Research Fund which looks to use the OU’s research to find novel solutions meet the UN’s sustainable development goals.

I’ve been at the OU for almost four years having previously worked in research support at the University of York and Natural History Museum. It is a fascinating place to work, one day helping an academic seek funding for a project looking at improving satellite technology and the next looking to build a network that will eventually increase the number of female researchers in the global south. 

Geoff Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Politics, has written widely about the history of political ideas and movements. Previous books include Not a Normal Country: Italy After Berluscon, and The Shadow Man. His next book, Agent Molière, the Life of John Cairncross, the Fifth Man of the Cambridge Spy Circle, will be published by I.B.Tauris in autumn 2019. He is chairing DD316 Modern Political Ideas and has contributed to many Open University modules in the past, including  DD211 Understanding Politics: Ideas and Institutions in the Modern World. 

Dr Callaghan is an economist working at The Open University. He has taught widely about the relationship between personal finance and economics and has conducted research into regional economic policy in Scotland. He also leads projects in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, focusing on the use of social media in education.

Internationally recognized as the father of the Life Planning movement, George Kinder revolutionized financial advice for over 30 years by training over 3,000 professionals in 30 countries in the field of Financial Life Planning. He founded the Kinder Institute of Life Planning after 30 years as a practising tax adviser and financial planner. He has written six books, including three books on money, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, Lighting the Torch, and Life Planning for You, one on mindfulness, and an illuminated manuscript of photography and poetry. In his new book, A Golden Civilization and a Map of Mindfulness, Kinder draws on 50 years as a mindfulness practitioner, 30 years as a mindfulness teacher, and his experience training financial advisors globally to challenge the basic concepts of economics, our understanding of democracy, of space-time, and our own hearts. His objective is to bring greater levels of freedom everywhere.

Georgia Palmer is about to begin her final year with The Open University, hoping to graduate with an LLB (Hons) in June 2018. She has been involved with the law society (OULS) for the past three years, and has thoroughly enjoyed every opportunity to moot both internally and externally. Alongside her legal studies, Georgia has found a great deal of benefit for career development through pro-bono volunteering with Citizens Advice, her local law centre, the Free Representation Unit and the National Centre for Domestic Violence. 

Georgy is a Senior Lecturer in Design and Innovation. She leads the BA/BSc Design and Innovation and, as a member of the U101, T217 and T317 module teams, she has written teaching material for all these core design courses. Georgy has been at the OU for more than 30 years, in a variety of roles and she is also an OU graduate. She loves teaching design because she enjoys seeing students’ creativity blossom. Her research interests are in teaching design at a distance and the use of technologies to assist this. She is also interested in community participation and fostering creative thinking in the wider community. As an OU graduate who has also been a tutor and had regional and central academic roles, Georgy has a good understanding of the needs of students and is always looking for ways to help students to learn effectively, including finding ways to enable students to get to know one another for peer support.

Further information to follow.

Gillian has over 20 years of experience working in clinical procurement, contracting and category/alliance management for large pharmaceutical/medical device companies, including GSK, Roche and BTG. Gillian is currently working for Mission Therapeutics, a small biotechnology company in Cambridge engaged in pre-clinical R & D. Gillian earned an MBA with Distinction from the OU and won the accolade of MBA Graduate of the Year 2017 based on academic merit.  Her dissertation addressed the role of using politics in organisations to move beyond inertia. Gillian also has an LL.B (Hons) and LL.M from University College London, specialising in European Law and IPRs; after her postgraduate law studies, she successfully completed her solicitors’ final exams. 

Gini Harrison is a senior lecturer in Psychology at The Open University, specialising in applied cognition and mental health across two broad research areas: clinical psychology, and forensic and criminal justice work.

While Gini’s forensic research examines how well people perform as witnesses (i.e. in terms of face recognition), a large proportion of her more clinical work is focuses on investigating stress, anxiety and depression, and their measurement and manifestations in different cohorts.

Grace is a first year PhD student at The Open University (OU), having started in February this year. She completed her Integrated Masters of Physics at the University of Edinburgh last year, where she started to pursue her interest in astrobiology through summer research projects and her Masters research.

As part of AstrobiologyOU, Grace is working on developing new techniques to extract and analyse icy moon surfaces, with a focus on Enceladus and its potential for life. She is also interested in the effects of space weathering on icy surfaces, for example interactions with planetary magnetospheres and micrometeoroid impacts. She also enjoys taking part in public outreach and has been involved in science festivals and school visits.

Graham Pike is a psychologist with an interest in applied cognition; in particular, how psychological knowledge can be used to obtain evidence from eyewitnesses. He has conducted research with the College of Policing, the Home Office, ACPO and more than 25 police forces, with the aim of improving investigative procedures, and he has helped develop new technology such as the VIPER and E-FIT systems. He joined the OU in 2000 and, as well as being Head of Psychology, has created and directed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Criminology and Psychology, and the undergraduate degree in Forensic Psychology. Graham is currently Director of Research of the Centre for Policing Research and Learning, and is an active member of the Forensic Cognition Research Group.

Gunjan is a lecturer in Geography and is co-chairing the production of SSGS's first indepdent research dissertation module entitled Researching Everyday Gegoraphies. Previously she has held postdoctoral and research fellow positions at York University, Canada and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research focuses on the interplay between gender, work, education and mobility.  This work has stretched across South Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, the UK and the EU to examine the mobility of international students, and highly skilled migrants within academia, the IT sector and Finance.