Shaheen Hashmat is a Scottish Pakistani writer and social commentator living in West London.

Graduating from Brunel University in 2008, Shaheen first came to the attention of her contemporaries with her double prize-winning dissertation, Caleduniya, the unique story of her youth spent as the youngest daughter of corner-shop owners in Central Scotland.

Shortly after graduating, Shaheen was invited to speak at a Brunel University conference entitled “Creative Writing and How to Teach It”.  Her presentation,Worlds at Play, focused on the importance of journaling as a way of increasing awareness of authorial choice. Her speech was published earlier this year by the celebrated Journal of New Writing.

Shaheen is also interested in dramatic arts and the fusion of media.  At seventeen, she gained a Higher National Certificate in Performing Arts from Edinburgh’s Telford College, and has worked as a performer and drama teacher in Edinburgh and Tenerife before studying English with Creative Writing.

Her interests were combined when she was selected to work as a research consultant for Oscar and BAFTA award-winning film producer, Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, in 2009 and she worked closely with Puttnam and Futurelab Education, as well as the IoE, to promote moving image education in formal curricula.

Shaheen is “passionate about working with new media in order to discover and express personal voice in an age of fragmented, ever-evolving and increasingly diverse cultural identities”.

You can contact Shaheen by emailing her at shaheen@shaheenhashmat.com