Faiza Shaheen (1983) British economist and left-wing activist
Faiza Shaheen
Born 1983
Leytonstone, London, England
Education Chingford Foundation School
Alma mater St John’s College, Oxford
University of Manchester
Political party Labour
Faiza Shaheen (born 1983) is a British economist and left-wing activist.
She is the director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS).
In 2019, she unsuccessfully contested the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency for the Labour Party.
Faiza Shaheen was born in Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, east London. Her father was a car mechanic from Fiji and her mother was a Pakistani lab technician.[3][4] She was raised in Chingford and attended Chingford School, followed by St John's College, Oxford University, where she read philosophy, politics and economics.
Shaheen also holds an MSc in Research Methods & Statistics and a PhD from the University of Manchester.
Career
She has been the head of inequality and sustainable development at Save the Children UK and a senior researcher on economic inequality at the New Economics Foundation (NEF). She is the director of a left policy think tank, the Centre for Labour & Social Studies (CLASS).
Shaheen is a regular contributor to debates on television news programmes, including Newsnight and Channel 4 News, and has worked with Channel 4 and the BBC to develop documentaries on inequality.
Politics
She is a longtime Labour voter and was politicised from an early age. She joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.
In 2017, The Guardian identified her as a "rising star".
In 2017, Shaheen was also nominated for Asian Woman of the Year at the Asian Achievers Awards and included in the Top 100 Influencers on the Left list.
In July 2018, she was selected to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party for Chingford and Woodford Green.
Her campaign was the subject of a six minute video report in the Guardian which emphasised her local origin and working class background, contrasting these with the incumbent, Iain Duncan Smith.
She lost the election. Following her defeat, she said that the result was the "biggest injustice" and that "They can enjoy tonight, but me, and you and all the troublemakers have got to come for them tomorrow"
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