Dr. Ornette D. Clennon is the Head of Institute at MACTRI (Manchester Community Training & Research Institute). He is also a collaborating researcher and Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Amazon (UFAM), where he contributes to the theme of decolonial community and liberation psychology. Ornette has also been a Visiting Research Fellow in critical race studies and lecturer in community arts practices and popular musicology at Manchester Metropolitan University (ManMet), where he led its Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster. As a ManMet representative, Ornette was a Public Engagement Ambassador for the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE). Ornette's engaged scholarship that bridges the gap between the academy and the grassroots has been recognized with the 2011 NCCPE New Partnership Award. Ornette is a community activist at local, national and international levels, as he works with the MEaP Academy Community Education Centre where he is their Head of Online Learning, The Ubele Initiative, Locality, The Alci Matos Community (Manaus, Brazil), United Nations International Coalition of People of African Descent (ICPAD) in association with OHCHR, MACC (Manchester Community Central), CAHN (Caribbean and African Health Network), GMHSCP (GM Health and Social Care Partnership), Young Manchester, Young People’s Foundation (YPF) and the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRCSE), where he has been their Chair of Trustees. 

Ornette is widely published, among his latest books are Alternative Education and Community Engagement: Making Education a Priority (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Urban Dialectics, The Market and Youth Engagement: The Black Face of Eurocentrism? (Nova Science Publishers, 2015), International Perspectives of Multiculturalism: The Ethical Challenges (Nova Science Publishers, 2016), The Polemics of CLR James and Contemporary Black Activism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Black Scholarly Activism between the Academy and Grassroots: A Bridge for Identities and Social Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Ornette is also the Series Editor for book series Palgrave Studies in Decolonisation and Grassroots Black Organic Intellectualism and co-author with Dr Faye Bruce of Decolonising Public Health through Praxis: The Impact on Black Health in the UK (2022), the first volume in the series.