David CheesmanDavid Cheesman was brought up in India, Ghana, Nigeria, Jersey and Turkey, and mostly educated in England. His first job was as a Lecturer in English at the University of Constantine, Algeria. He has a PhD in South Asian history from the School of Orental and African Studies, University of London, and has published academic articles and a book on the economic and social history of Sindh in Pakistan, as well as papers about decolonisation in Africa, community cohesion in the UK, and Islam and secularism in Britain and France. He was an external examiner and Visiting Professor of Society and Development at Sheffield Hallam University. During the 1980s, he carried out efficiency initiatives in the court service of England, Wales and Northern Ireland as a member of the Lord Chancellor's management scrutiny team, and later ran the UK government's urban programme for inner city development in Hackney and Southwark. As Head of Policy and Research at the Housing Corporation, the government agency formerly responsible for regulating social housing in England, he operated a £2m per year research programme, directing over 200 projects designed to support and improve housing policy. He has arranged, chaired or spoken at numerous national and international seminars and conferences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Statistical Society, and a member of the American Statistical Association.He now advises on the regulation of UK financial services and is a Director of Equality in Diversity, an independent research, management and training consultancy. He is Vice Chair and former Chair of Squared Housing Association, founder Secretary of the United Nations Association - Luton Branch and the Patron of Purbachal-the eastern sky, a Bangladeshi cultural organisation based in Luton. Read More Read Less