Faiza Shaheen

Faiza Shaheen (born 1982/1983) is a British academic and economist in the field of economic inequality.

In 2007, she joined the urban policy research charity, Centre for Cities.

In 2009, she became senior researcher on economic inequality at the New Economics Foundation.

In 2014, she was appointed head of Inequality and Sustainable Development at charity Save the Children UK.

She joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.

From 2016, she became director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS), a policy think tank originating from the trade union movement.

Since January 2021, Shaheen has been the Program Director, Inequality and Exclusion of the Pathfinders in the Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies program at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University.

She is also visiting professor in practice at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics.

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.

In 2023, Shaheen's first book, Know Your Place, on social inequality in the UK, was published by Simon and Schuster.

Shaheen is a longtime Labour voter and says she has been politicised from an early age.

In 2017, The Guardian identified her as a "rising star" and she was nominated for Woman of the Year at the Asian Achievers Awards and named one of the Top 100 Influencers on the Left.

According to one newspaper, she has been compared to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In 2018, and again in 2022, she was selected to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for Labour for Chingford and Woodford Green.

In 2023, her first book, Know Your Place, was published.

Shaheen was born in Whipps Cross University Hospital, Leytonstone, and grew up in Chingford, in East London.

Her father was a car mechanic originally from Fiji and her mother a laboratory technician from Pakistan, where they met.

She has a brother and a sister.

She attended Chingford Church of England Primary School, Chingford Foundation School and Sir George Monoux College.

Her first job was at Greggs the bakers in Chingford Mount.

After reading philosophy, politics and economics at St John's College, Oxford University, Shaheen studied at the University of Manchester, being awarded an MSc in Research Methods & Statistics and a PhD.

Shaheen first worked at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies, University of Bristol.

Shaheen was selected to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party for Chingford and Woodford Green in July 2018.

She has stated that her motivation for standing was the stress her own and other families had suffered as a result of welfare reforms instituted by the constituency’s longstanding Conservative incumbent, Iain Duncan Smith, during his time as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

In the 2019 general election, Shaheen increased Labour’s vote, contrary to the national trend, and garnered the party’s largest ever vote share in the constituency, but lost by a narrow margin.

In July 2022, Shaheen was selected to contest the seat again for the Labour Party at the next United Kingdom general election.

Shaheen favours universal childcare, free school meals for primary school children, increased funding for the state education sector including investment in special needs provision and child mental health support, the abolition of university tuition fees, improved local transport links, and the restoration of neighbourhood policing with additional Police Officers and PCSO’s.

Shaheen has been vocal on the urgent need to rebuild the local Whipps Cross Hospital and to expand the NHS workforce to reduce waiting lists and improve provision.

She has been reported as thanking those who toppled the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th century slave trader in Bristol, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

Shaheen has voiced her objection to the division sown by rightwing weaponisation of the white working class as a separate racial category, stating: "Since when did the working class become white? It's a mythology. It’s as if you’re not allowed to be working class if you’re brown or black... "

Shaheen advocates action on the climate crisis, supporting efforts to increase investment in greening the UK’s economy and boosting renewable energy.

Shaheen’s first book, Know Your Place, is part memoir, part polemic.

Shaheen describes the work as “a personal and statistical look at how society and the economy are structured, what really defines your life chances and how our current system keeps us locked into an ugly hierarchy.” Supported by copious statistics, Shaheen delves into factors from inherited wealth to class, race, and education to argue that social mobility is “a fairytale” propagated by those with wealth and power as a means to protect their status and privilege.

Shaheen is married to the actor Akin Gazi.

They have one son and live in the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency.