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CERES: Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland 
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Rowena Arshad OBE
Rowena is the Director of the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES) and a Senior Lecturer with the School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. Currently, she sits on the Advisory Board for the British Council Scotland and is the Chair of Equality Forward which supports equality issues within the college and university sectors in Scotland.
She holds one Ministerial appointment as a member of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council. Until the end of September 2007, she was also Equal Opportunities Commissioner for Scotland. She is currently on the Scotland Committee of the GB Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
Previously she chaired the education sub-group for the Race Equality Advisory Forum of the Scottish Government, the Equality Advisory Group of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and was a member of the Independent Commission on Student Finance (the Cubie Committee) and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education. She has also chaired the Widening Access to Local Democracy Working Group for the Scottish Government.
In a voluntary capacity, together with other colleagues, she set up the Linknet Mentoring Initiative in Edinburgh which provides mentoring for visible minority ethnic people into education and employment and the after school club in the local primary school where she lives.
Rowena has worked in the area of equality since 1983 in England and Scotland, and has given lectures in the Czech Republic, Canada, and Germany. She returned to Germany in April 2006 to engage in a lecture tour focusing on lessons from Scotland in the area of equality and diversity. She has also headed a consortium with Nil by Mouth and the then Scottish Human Rights Centre to develop an education resource to challenge sectarianism and religious intolerance for the Scottish Government. She has also contributed to the LGBT Hearts and Minds Group on Citizenship and Social Capital.
Rowena was awarded the OBE in 2001 for services to race equality.
Rowena’s publications
