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Centre Director
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Dr Fidèle Mutwarasibo
Fidèle is a Lecturer in Work Based Learning in the Faculty of Business and Law at the Open University. He has previously worked in the voluntary sector at all levels (volunteer, executive and trustee/director). As a consultant at The Open University’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership, between 2018 and 2021, he facilitated local learning clubs aimed at promoting leadership development in the voluntary (third) sector in the UK, Europe, and Africa. In terms of research interests, he is studying inclusive leadership and collaboration practices aimed at addressing in a systemic way, racial inequality, where the leadership of Black and Minority Ethnic plays an active role.
For more information, on Fidèle’s professional experience, publications, public engagement and research interest check out his profile on LinkedIn and Google Scholar.
Centre Chair
Professor Siv Vangen
Siv is Professor of Collaborative Leadership, founding director and Chair of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership. Her research, which has spanned two decades, focuses on governing, leading and managing inter-organisational collaboration. The aim of Siv’s research is to explore the complexity that underlies collaborative situations in practice, to investigate the challenges that are intrinsic to them and to develop conceptual frameworks that can in turn inform collaboration in practice.
Centre Members
Dr Jacqueline Baxter
Jacqueline Baxter is Director of the Centre For Research and Innovation in online legal and business Education and Chairs one of the largest population modules in the OU Business School, 'An introduction to business and management'. Her interests lie in the area of public sector governance, accountability and trust. She is particularly interested in how volunteer boards and trustees create and implement strategy within the complex and rapidly changing area of education in England.
Dr Helen Britton
Helen is an educational practitioner, researcher and entrepreneur. After starting her professional life in the chemical industry, she re-trained to teach mathematics and to develop her entrepreneurial interests in construction and property restoration. She has lectured in mathematics and Access to Science and Technology. Helen has almost three decades of experience of designing and delivering innovative and inclusive courses and capital projects as part of multi-stakeholder initiatives within the United Kingdom.
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Dr Francesca Calo
Francesca Calo is a Lecturer in Management at the Department of Public Leadership & Social Enterprise, where she brings academic experience from posts held in the UK and Italy. Her research interests include social enterprise and third sector organisation in health and social care, impact evaluation methods and social innovation, including coproduction and relation between third sector and public sector and third sector as a facilitator of integration of migrants and refugees.
Professor Chris Cornforth
Chris Cornforth is Emeritus Professor of Organisational Governance and Management in the OU Business School. His research focuses on the governance and leadership of third sector organisations and has helped break new ground theoretically and methodologically in understanding the behaviour of governing bodies, their relations with senior managers and the role of chairs. He has published widely in academic journals, books and publications for practitioners. He is a trustee of the Association of Chairs.
Dr Daniel Haslam
Daniel is a Lecturer in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise. He has spent most of his adult life working, volunteering, and researching in and around the voluntary sector. His roles have spanned a variety of different areas, from working as a personal support officer to working on strategic policy development. He has carried out these roles in a variety of different organisations, from local service providers to a national charity. He covers criminal justice, learning disability/difficulty, sexual orientation, gender identity and mental health.
Dr Carol Jacklin-Jarvis
Carol spent over 20 years working in public and voluntary organisations before returning to academia to research voluntary sector leadership and collaboration. Previous posts include Director of Amber Valley Centre for Voluntary Services and Strategy Manager for Localities and Childcare at Poole Borough Council. In 2014, she became a lecturer in the Department for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise (PuLSE), where she teaches on modules focused on collaboration, leadership, and ‘management beyond the mainstream’.
Dr Gemma Lord
Gemma is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour in the OU Business School. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester after undertaking a Research Route MA in Politics: Governance and Public Policy. Before returning to higher education, Gemma worked for nine years in public and voluntary sector organisations. Gemma’s research with voluntary sector organisations is concerned with their management and their function in shifting contexts of society, politics, technology and economy.
Dr Michael Ngoasong
Michael is a Senior Lecturer in Management and Director of Masters Programmes. His research centres on the links between entrepreneurship and development, with case studies spanning tourism, healthcare, energy, agribusiness and digital technology sectors. Recent research includes a British Academy funded project with Dr Albert Kimbu, University of Surrey, which involved stakeholder engagement workshops debating and evaluating the commercial and social transformational impacts of women as owner-managers of small tourism firms.
Dr Karen Potter
Karen is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise. Her research interest in the voluntary sector was somewhat ‘accidental’, working closely with Rivers Trusts as their role in natural flood risk management was recently extended under the new government initiative ‘Catchment Based Approach’. Initially seeing Rivers Trusts and other environmental NGOs as the policy entrepreneurs in this arena, she began working to understand the policy and practice implications of the initiative.
Dr James Rees
James is Deputy Director of the Institute for Community Research and Development at the University of Wolverhampton. He was previously the Anthony Nutt Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership. Recent research has focused on the role of the third sector in service delivery, cross-sectoral partnership, commissioning, and organisational change and the role of citizens and service users, drawing on a range of theoretical traditions in the fields of governance and organisational studies.
Dr Owain Smolovic-Jones
Owain teaches and researches leadership and its development, primarily in the public and voluntary sectors. His approach is political, particularly focusing on the power dynamics of learning and enacting leadership. Owain completed his PhD at Cranfield University, researching the political dynamics of public sector leadership development programmes. Prior to entering academic life, he worked in communications for the Labour Party.
Dr Vita Terry
Vita is a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership and a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Voluntary Action Research. She has a long-standing interest in the voluntary sector, actively participating in the refugee sector in different capacities such as a policy researcher and volunteer, and for several years has been a trustee of a small local HIV charity. Before joining IVAR, she worked as a Research Fellow in the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership.
Research Students
Lindsey Elliott
Lindsey is a pragmatic, interdisciplinary researcher. Her academic background is in biology (BSc), tropical forestry (MSc) and agroforestry (MSc) but her interests have focussed on the relationships between people and the environment, and between organisations working to protect the environment. She has worked for and researched voluntary organisations striving to protect the world’s biodiversity and is keen to help find ways to enable them to effectively collaborate together and with other sectors such as academia, business and policy.
Ronald Macintyre
Ronald has worked in open and distance education at The Open University since 2003, teaching on various OU modules in education and technology, authoring courses on sustainability and working as a researcher into the scholarship of teaching learning. Most recently, this involved exploring the design production and use of practices associated with free open online materials. Typically, this involved working in partnership with other HEIs and non-informal learning providers, in particular Third Sector organisations.
Cristina Mititelu
Cristina is the Anthony Nutt PhD Scholar. Her research interests focus on commissioning for social value and understanding the relationships between local authorities and voluntary sector organisations in the provision of public services. She is interested in the implementation of social value in the commissioning process and the role of voluntary sector organisations in England. She has been involved in research projects and postgraduate training programs on non-profit organisations, social innovation and social responsibility.
Akash Puranik (PhD now completed)
Prior to the beginning of his PhD with The Open University, Akash worked as a Lecturer on MBA programmes delivered by Glyndwr University and University of Wales, designing and delivering modules for strategy, marketing and business environment. His background in the service and education industry, involvement with numerous charities as well as his personal interest in understanding ethical and moral implications of ‘working together’ inform his research work.
Sally Vivyan
Sally holds a BSc in International Relations from LSE and an MSc in Development Management from the OU. She worked in the third sector for 13 years (in International Development and grant-making charities) and is now a Research PhD student in PuLSE. Sally’s thesis is exploring leadership practice in new asylum seeker and refugee charities. Her study adopts a Leadership as Practice lens and is relevant to both the leadership and voluntary sector literatures.
Lindsay Wilson-Jones
Lindsay is interested in opening the ‘black box' of federated board leadership in the voluntary sector. Her research explores the everyday realities of how trustees lead and govern. She brings to her research experience of senior management roles in human resources in both the corporate and public sectors. Her experience is supported by BSc and MSc degrees in psychology and a Master’s research degree (Management and Business). She currently volunteers as a member nominated director of a pension plan.
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