Shaheen Hashmat is a Scottish Pakistani writer and former campaigner against forced marriage in the UK. She has written widely on her experiences of escaping ‘honour’-based abuse and the threat of forced marriage when she was a child, focusing on the lifelong mental health impact. She remains an ambassador for HARM Network, a multi-disciplinary research network focused on ‘honour’-based abuse, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and other under-researched and often misunderstood forms of abuse.
Having studied English and creative writing at Brunel University, Shaheen is now working on a memoir, It Ends With Us. She has contributed to Telegraph Wonder Women, and has also appeared on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, BBC Asian Network, ITV London, Reuters and a number of other media outlets. Shaheen is winner of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) True Honour Award 2016.
You can contact Shaheen by emailing her at shaheen@shaheenhashmat.com. If you have been affected by ‘honour’-related issues yourself in some way, or work with those who have, please see this list of organisations that can help. You can also follow her on Twitter or Mastodon.