<p>Dr. Mellissa Ifill is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Institutional Advancement at the University of Guyana and holds the substantive appointment of Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Social Studies. Dr. Ifill is a multidisciplinary scholar and has taught courses in History, Politics and International Relations at UG since 1999. Dr. Ifill is a specialist in Democratic Governance and Ethnicised Politics, Gender and Citizen Security, Violence and Crime – with a focus on prisons in Guyana and the English-speaking Caribbean.&nbsp;Dr. Ifill served as the Guyana author for UNDP’s first Caribbean Human Development Report. She is currently engaged in research on gendered crime and violence and, prisons and coloniality and been the Co-Investigator and Guyana lead of several collaborative projects with the Guyana Prison Service and the University of Leicester including the following projects: ‘History of the Georgetown Jail’, ‘History and Security Sector Reform: Crime and Punishment in British Colonial Guyana, 1814-1966’ and the most recent Mental, Neurological and Substance Abuse Disorders in Guyana’s Jails:&nbsp;1825 to the Present Day.’ Dr. Ifill served as Chairperson of the Guyana Prison Service Sentence Management Board between 2015-2020. Dr. Ifill is deeply committed to advancing gender and social justice and human rights.</p>