Meet Our School of Social Sciences and Health Team
Professor Rob McCusker
Head of School – Social Sciences and Health | Head of Academic Delivery & Development
Rob is the former Head of the Division of Community and Criminal Justice (De Montfort University) and former Director of the Centre for Fraud and Financial Crime (Teesside University) and holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship (Charles Sturt University, Australia) and an Adjunct Professorship (UiTM in Malaysia). Rob provides strategic and policy advice to government bodies and international organisations, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, on any crime which crosses a border. He is a retained expert on ‘anti-money laundering’, ‘combating organized crime’ and ‘combating terrorism and its funding’ for the Economic Crime and Cooperation Division, Council of Europe, a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Centre in the USA, which provides research and analytical capability for the Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism at the US Department of State, and is a retained expert on ‘anti-corruption’ for the Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative (European Union).
Prosperine Chibule
MA, BA ED, PGCE, A1 – Programme Manager – Health and Social Care
Prosperine began her teaching career in Zambia and taught at the secondary and university levels.
After moving to England, she pursued an MA in health and social policy while working for Westminster Mind as a befriender and Mencap as a support worker. An MA and social care experience enabled her to gain insight into the UK’s health and social care system.
Prosperine is also a qualified worked based assessor and has been assessing students in different care settings for the past eight years.
Prosperine’s interests are in contemporary issues in health.
Jack Adams
MSc, BSc, FHEA – Programme Manager – Social Sciences
Jack completed his MSc in Social Policy and Social Research from UCL, focusing on contemporary social problems, the policymaking process and research methodologies. He has since developed research interests in criminal justice, looking at cross-European comparisons of being on remand with critical reflections on policy differences and exploring restorative justice through trauma-informed practice. As a visiting lecturer in Criminology & Sociology at Buckinghamshire New University, Jack is also interested in the world of work, leisure and a Universal Basic Income as a new form of income distribution.
Pardis Asadi Zeidabadi
Dr, PhD, MA, BSc – Programme Manager – Social Sciences
Dr Pardis Asadi Zeidabadi has been a lecturer at the City University of London, Newcastle University and Goldsmiths University. She completed her PhD at Newcastle University in December 2019. Her PhD thesis seeks to explore women’s perspectives in feminist and women’s activism in Iran on important aspects of their political identity and priorities. Her research explores how women with different beliefs respond to their political and social changes. She is broadly interested in the area of gender and politics and the intersectionality of race, gender and class.
Professor Bruce Sheppy
MBA, FHEA – Senior Lecturer – Social Sciences and Health
Bruce is an experienced senior management professional having served as group Marketing director of a South African hospital group listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and as CEO of a pan-African medical insurance and health management group with offices in Egypt, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana and Rwanda. After moving to England in 2003, he changed his career to that of an academic, trainer and consultant. In England, he has also served as a director of an NHS Acute Trust, a Community Association and a Mental Health charity in London.
A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Member of the Institute of Directors, he is also a visiting lecturer at a number of London-based universities and colleges in the subject areas of strategy, marketing and leadership. He has an extensive publication record in peer-reviewed journals and is on the editorial board of a leading healthcare management journal, and is a director of an environmental management institute.
Theona Elizee
Lecturer – Social Sciences
Theona brings a wealth of experience in advocacy, research, negotiations and administration, policy and management gained in quasi-regulatory roles and work environments which are focused on timelines and directly working with intergovernmental bodies and in collaboration with international organisations.
Theona possesses a strong background in both companies and intellectual property law administration having held a management position in the field for more than 10 years which involved trademarks, patents and company application examination and approval, including post-registration matters. As such, she has in-depth knowledge of branding, pharmaceutical patenting, and regulation gained through her PhD in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University.
Busy or not, Theona plays and umpires in netball with social clubs in London and volunteers with non-profit organisations in the OECS Sub-Region on varied projects.
She is indeed grateful to be lecturing at DGHE as it allows her to utilise transferable skills to impart knowledge to varied groups.
Andrew Thomas
DipSW, BSc(Hons), MA, SFHEA – Lecturer – Health and Social Care
Andrew is a freelance educator working primarily in health and social care. Andrew worked as a social worker and senior social work practitioner with adults for seven years before moving into social work training. He has subsequently worked primarily within higher education, developing and delivering social work degree programmes at Havering Collee and the University of Essex. Andrew has provided safeguarding training for home care workers, cross-college training for teachers at Havering College and interprofessional training for medical students at Barts.
As an Advanced Practitioner at Havering College, Andrew conducted formal teaching and learning observations across curriculum areas, coached new teachers and developed a peer observation policy. At Essex University, he redesigned the selection process. Andrew became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2016 and currently works in adult education alongside teaching HND courses in Healthcare Practice and Public Services.
Chay M. Burt
LLM, LLB, AFHEA – Lecturer – Social Sciences
Chay is currently completing his PhD in Law at the University of Sussex, where he has also completed his LLM in Law and LLB in Law with Business Management. His doctoral research, as an expansion of his undergraduate dissertation, focuses on different approaches to regulating assisted dying across various jurisdictions. Other research interests include comparative legal studies methodologies, socio-legal research, healthcare law, and criminal law & criminology. During his PhD, Chay has taught various modules in the LLB Law undergraduate course at the University of Sussex – specialising in Criminal Law. He is currently a Lecturer in Public Health MSc at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
Dr. Nabia Hafeez
Dr, PhD, BSc (Hons) – Lecturer – Health and Social Care
Dr. Nabia Hafeez completed her PhD in Biotechnology from Pakistan in 2017. She worked on Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan funded research project during her PhD research. During which, Nabia worked as a research associate; thereby completing her own project whilst co-supervising other BSc Hons and MPhil students in their research projects. After moving to England in 2016, she started working as a reviewer for different Journals. She currently works as a reviewer for one Pakistani and two International Journals. She recently joined David Game Higher education as a lecturer. Her key subjects of interest include Biology, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Pharmacology and Use of Medicinal plants and their extracts against diseases and Bio-nanotechnology.
Dr. Demetrius Delibasis Fokas
Dr, PhD, LLM, JD – Lecturer – Social Sciences
Dr. Demetrius Delibasis Fokas has a Military and Public Law background and splits his time between his duties in academia and the defense sector. He is a General Counsel for National Security Law and International Affairs and a Professor in Information Warfare and the Conduct of Joint Operations, and he writes extensively on the evolution of law, war, and strategy. He is interested in the conduct of information warfare as a means of providing modern air and naval operating forces with sufficient over-match in wartime command and control and of projecting power through and across modern networks.
His research attempts to build upon the paradigm first set forth by Professor Phillip Bobbitt and focuses on 21st-century global networked warfare which has ushered in a new era of warfare that for the first time ever has an inherent ability to ignore physical borders with impunity and essentially calls into question the traditional notion of State Sovereignty. He has contributed to several Articles, Books, and White Papers and he is the author of Information Warfare Operations & Self-Defense which is the first book of its type and the first-ever attempt to codify the conduct of information warfare operations within the actual context of current international legal norms.
Khetish Hurry
LLB(Hons), BPTC, LLM, PGCHE – Lecturer – Social Sciences
Khetish is a former Police Officer who worked for the Metropolitan Police from 2016 till 2021 before embarking in his teaching career. Prior to joining DGHE as a full-time lecturer, he has taught new Metropolitan Police recruits studying the B.Sc. Professional Policing Practice Programme at the University of East London and the Anglia Ruskin University. He is also an associate lecturer at the Institute of Foundation Studies at Arden University. Khetish was called to the Bar of England and Wales as a Barrister in November 2022 at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. He has also completed his master’s in law from the University of the West of England in August 2023. His dissertation focused on the onus of justification on the Police and the Judiciary in breaching fundamental Human Rights when upholding the law.
Dr Faiza Qureshi
Dr, PhD, PGCert, MSc, BSc (Hons), FHEA – Lecturer – Social Sciences
Dr Faiza Qureshi completed her PhD from Loughborough University in December 2008. Her PhD focused on patterns and trends in police stop and search by analysing data from the British Crime Survey (now Crime Survey for England and Wales) and police statistics. She has worked with different police forces in England and Wales to carry out research. Her research interests focus on policing, counterterrorism, extremism, radicalisation, and repeat victimisation. She is co-author of Introduction to Statistics with SPSS for Social Science.