Manjeet Ridon

Associate Dean International, Faculty of Arts, Design & Humanities, De Montfort University
Dr Manjeet Ridon is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, which was awarded for her strategic leadership in international Higher Education and across a number of areas, including teaching and learning, international partnership developments and Transnational Education (TNE).

Dr Ridon is the Associate Dean International for the faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities at De Montfort University (DMU) and currently undertaking a secondment as the Head of DMU London, with responsibility for the set-up and launch of DMU’s London campus. This is an exciting new campus development that will open in September 2025 and will focus exclusively on delivering high-quality postgraduate education in the heart of London.

Previously, from 2019-2022, Dr Ridon was instrumental in the set-up and launch of DMU Dubai in the UAE, and DMU's first overseas branch campus development. During this time, as both the project and academic lead, and as the inaugural provost (2021-2022), Manjeet led on the appointment of a teaching team, and ensuring the first academic year of the campus was a success.

Dr Ridon is also the institutional lead for developing strategies for embedding sustainability and employability in international partnerships and TNE activity. As a member of the University’s Sustainability Committee, Dr Ridon works closely with the DMU Sustainability team and has delivered on carbon literacy initiatives with international students and external businesses and university partners. Dr Ridon is a Carbon Literacy facilitator and trainer and has delivered training and taster sessions with DMU students and staff. When Dr Ridon was leading the DMU Dubai campus project and as provost of the Dubai campus she led a training initiative for all academic staff teaching at the campus and students at the campus to undertake carbon literacy training. The success of this initiative led to the Dubai campus achieving bronze status accreditation from the Carbon Literacy Project, https://carbonliteracy.com/

Dr Ridon is the chair of the DMU India Advisory Board, which facilitates structured engagement between the University, and Indian businesses and institutions based in India, and British business in the East Midlands. As chair of this Advisory Board, she oversees special initiatives for international students from India and staff at De Montfort University, who have a vested interest in India. For example, student-led celebrations to mark India’s 75th anniversary of independence. As Chair of this Advisory Board, Dr Ridon also welcomes partnership opportunities with other institutions in the Leicestershire region who have an interest in India, and thereby ensure DMU is able to fulfil its civic mission of representing the wider Indian community in Leicester.

Recently, as a member of the Decolonising DMU Expert Group, Dr Ridon contributed to the creation of a Staff Toolkit This toolkit is for staff interested in adapting their teaching for international students with reference to the Decolonising DMU programme – a programme which aims to reduce racial disparity and promote cultural diversity in higher education - and supporting academic activities to encourage an increased awareness of this institutional priority.

Dr Ridon’s research focuses mainly on literary and cinematic representations of myth in the literature and film of South Asian diasporic women writers and filmmakers in Canada and the USA. This specialised focus is contextualised within a wider interest in the contemporary cultural production of other ethnic and minority groups in North America, in particular the literature of African-American and Native American writers. Dr Ridon’s PhD was awarded prestigious funding by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Canadian Studies Foundation in the UK, and achieved at the University of Nottingham in 2015.

Dr Ridon has more than 20 years’ experience of working in international higher education and a TNE specialist, having worked at several universities in the UK and in positions based overseas, such as India and Uzbekistan.

Research interests:

Interdisciplinary approaches to teaching in International Higher Education
Internationalisation
Decolonisation in Higher Education
African-American literature - 19th century and 21st century
South Asian North American literature
Contemporary women's literature
Postcolonial theories and Decolonisation studies
Cultural studies and critical theory
Transnational Education research