Religious life and belief advisory board

Sughra Ahmed

With over 25 years’ experience at the nexus of academia, policy and communities, Sughra currently specialises in human rights education. Working in a range of spiritual capacities, she has spent time in the UK and USA exploring contextual theology and religious expressions across communities of faith and belief. Most recently, as Associate Dean for Religious Life, at Stanford University, she worked with young people helping them to find meaning and purpose as they moved through their academic lives. She has published works on culture, religion, identity, diversity and inclusion studying changing models of integration, engagement and religious expression in Europe.

Dal Babu

Dal served for over 30 years in the Metropolitan Police and is the former borough commander of Harrow. He was the first chair of the National Association of Muslim Police which worked with home secretaries, chief constables and community leaders. In 2010 he was elected to the National Police Superintendent Association of England and Wales. He has extensive board-level experience in policing, community safety, child and adult safeguarding.  

In 2010 Dal was awarded an OBE for services to the police and communities. Other awards include: the London High Sheriff Award for work with young people (2011), and the London Peace Award for community engagement (2011).  

Dal is a Non-Executive Director of School Academy, and Camden and Islington NHS Trust, as well as a  trustee for House of Illustration, Artichoke and Comedy School. He volunteers for a number of charities in London and enjoys football, cycling, hiking, and cricket with his daughters in his spare time.  

Dr Deesha Chadha OBE

Deesha is a national executive committee member of the Hindu Forum of Britain (an umbrella organisation reporting to central Government). She has served as a council member of the Faiths Forum for London from 2010, and was elected as a vice-chair and trustee in 2017. She is currently a co-chair of the charity, and is the first BAME woman to hold such a position. She was honoured with an OBE for services to faith communities in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2020. For the past few years Deesha has served as a national assessor for the Queen’s Awards for Voluntary Service (QAVS). In her professional role, Deesha is a senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London, having completed both her first degree and doctoral training at the University of Surrey in chemical engineering and engineering education respectively.

Francis Davis

Francis is an award-winning serial social entrepreneur and Professorial Fellow in the Institute of Ageing Population at the University of Oxford. He has previously served as non-executive director and chair of finance for an NHS Trust and as external advisor on disability and carers to Ministers in central government. His current projects are focused on social inclusion and innovation in Rwanda, Nigeria and the UK. Francis has advised the English Benedictine Congregation, several Catholic Bishops Conferences, Caritas International, the FCDO and MHLCG as well as international NGOs. He walks the South Downs and the Solent Way every year and his daughter is a proud Alumna of Guildford School of Acting. A few years ago Francis swam a mile in every county, with support from the County Councils Network, to raise funds for the mental health charity Combat Stress.

Patrick Degg

As Vice-President (External Engagement), and a member of the University’s Executive Board, Patrick’s portfolio brings together all of the University’s external engagement activities globally, including Advancement (leading teams responsible for managing the University’s relations - both philanthropic and otherwise - with its alumni and supporters), Events, trans-national education, academic partnerships, student/staff mobility, public and community engagement, and international student recruitment strategy. 

Amit Kalley

Amit is a Deputy Headteacher at a secondary school in East London. An alumnus of the University of Surrey, Amit is passionate about multi-faith interaction as a way of people better understanding each other and creating a better society. Before working in East London, Amit was Head of Sixth Form and an Assistant Headteacher at an orthodox Jewish school in NE London, using this experience to build on his multi-faith interactions. Amit’s main passion in education is ensuring the mental health and wellbeing of young people is catered for and he has his own podcast aimed at parents of teenagers called What Do Parents Know? 

Kishan Manocha

Kishan is the Head of the Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in Warsaw. From 2015-2020, he was ODIHR’s Senior Adviser on Freedom of Religion or Belief.   

Kishan has extensive experience in freedom of religion or belief and related human rights issues in Europe, North America, the Middle East and North Africa, and Central and South Asia as an advocate, researcher, trainer and consultant to a number of international and non-governmental organisations. He holds degrees in psychology and medicine from the University of London and in law from the University of Cambridge. Kishan has worked as a psychiatrist and is a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the UK. He also practised as a barrister in the areas of domestic and international criminal law. He served as Director of the UK Bahá’í community’s Office of Public Affairs from 2010-14, where he was responsible for leading the community’s engagement with government, parliament and civil society and coordinating its interfaith activities.   

Kishan has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, a Fellow of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, and a Special Adviser to the late Shahbaz Bhatti, former Minister for Minority Affairs in Pakistan. Kishan is a Research Fellow at the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, a Professional Associate at the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University, and a Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Values at Dublin City University. He is currently a member of the Global Steering Committee of the UN Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes and of the International Religious Freedom Alliance’s Global Council of Experts, a Patron of Faith in Leadership, and serves on trustee and advisory boards of a number of organizations, including Beyond Conflict, Faith Matters and Most Mira. 

Dr Abbas Panakkal

Dr Abbas Panakkal is the Director of the International Interfaith Harmony Initiative, which has been organising International Interfaith Conferences in collaboration with United Nations Initiatives, the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Department for Unity and Integration, and the International Islamic University Malaysia for the last seven consecutive years.

Dr Panakkal was awarded a fellowship by Centre for Interfaith & Cultural Dialogue, Griffith University, Australia. He was also the Project Coordinator of the G20 Interfaith Summit and was actively involved in these Summits, including co-organizing Pre-Conference Summits in the Middle East and South Asia. He has also organized intercultural engagements and adoption programmes for interreligious enrichment with the support of government and non-governmental agencies. He earned his PhD degree from the International Islamic University Malaysia with a dissertation on ‘Malabar’ and is continuing research in the wider realm of Malabar Moorings.

Dr Abbas Panakkal is an editor of Armonia Journal and he has been working on Islam, Malabar, law, religion, interreligious integrations, and intercultural cooperations. He is also the director of Ibn Battuta International Centre of Intercultural Studies and a  fellow at the King Abdullah International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, Vienna, Austria.   

Dr Panakkal is a columnist and a poet who contributes to various newspapers and magazines and writes and directs documentaries, including a number of documentary films.

Lynette Nusbacher

Lynette Nusbacher MA DPhil (Oxon) is an expert on horizon scanning and strategy. She has a background in structured strategy and national security. She was part of the team that created two of the UK’s National Security Strategies as part of Britain’s National Security Secretariat. She has been Senior Lecturer in War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; Head of the Strategic Horizons Unit in the UK Cabinet Office; and the Devil’s Advocate to Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Lynette coaches, mentors and speaks publicly in person and through television.