Vanisha Jassal (SFHEA) has been with the Centre for Child Protection since 2012. She is Senior Lecturer and Director of Studies for the MA in Advanced Child Protection programme, a popular inter-professional online and distance learning programme. She is a Senior Fellow with the Higher Education Academy. The MA attracts students from a variety of child protection agencies from across the world. She also manages the Centre’s standalone MA modules, creating opportunities for students to achieve qualifications through pathways which are not exclusively based on the MA route.

She is currently studying for a PhD in managing child sexual abuse in the British South Asian communities: an area of policy and practice about which very little is known, hence leaving children at risk. Other qualifications include an MSc in Innovation (University of Aston), PG Diploma in Psychodynamics (Birkbeck College London) and PGCHE (University of Kent).

Vanisha is also Co-chair of the University of Kent’s BAME Staff Network.

Vanisha has several years’ experience in the field of child protection practice and has developed research interests in direct work with children and young people and how we can better understand their wishes and feelings. She is also interested in investigating inequalities and social disadvantage in child welfare and interventions and services for children and families from ethnic minority communities.

Vanisha is a member of SSPSSR’s MERB Research Cluster looking at migration, ethnicity, race and belonging.