Meet our graduates — Asiya and Sabahi
Asiya and Sabahi are graduates of our part-time Learning and Teaching with SEND BA and are involved with their former tutors at the LLC, Anita Collins and Nadine Cavigioli, in a collaborative autoethnography focusing on the intersections of gender, minoritised ethnicities and working-class student experiences.
Says Sabahi:
When I was approached by Anita and Nadine to be involved in this research project I eagerly agreed for various reasons — not only because I missed student life and being part of the University of Leeds community, but also because of how important I felt the research to be. It was crucial to me to be able to share my experiences and highlight the importance of my faith, which shapes who I am and my whole existence. Everything else, including class, gender and ethnicity, comes second.
During my studies I was never made to feel different due to my ethnicity or faith, but I nonetheless sometimes felt like an outsider. For example, I couldn’t meet with my cohort at the pub for religious reasons, and I wasn’t sure they understood when I explained why I couldn’t join them. When I had to offer prayers, it felt wrong to ask a tutor if I could pray during class while everyone was trying to pay attention. I felt uncomfortable praying in the corner — bowing, raising up from prostration and so on. I was overwhelmed with thoughts of how my peers felt about me praying during class, and what my tutor thought of it.
I think a lot of this had to do with how Islam is often portrayed in mass media. Through the Prophet’s teaching, women are obliged to seek and increase their knowledge and work to provide for themselves. However, the extent to which this is honoured has mainly to do with culture. For example, I’m a working-class wife and mother of three children who has been expected to stay at home and look after my family — and not to get involved with higher education due to a perception that it would prevent me from doing this.
But the Quran states that “the believing men and believing women are allies of one another…” [9:71]. Both genders are equally responsible for establishing families — and a just society.
In Summer 2023 Asiya and Sabahi were invited by Anita and Nadine to co-present a paper with them discussing the project, at a joint conference of the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning (UALL) and the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (SCUTREA).
Says Asiya:
I was honoured, particularly when I realised the conference was being held at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge had always made me think of prestigious education, and I began the day with butterflies in my stomach and much excitement. My first impression of the place was ‘Wow’ — I couldn’t believe I was there!
Sabahi and I were at the conference to talk about our experience of university and the issues that we’d faced coming from an ethnic minority background — to showcase the positive aspects of practicing our religion whilst studying, but also to highlight the barriers that we’d encountered.
The experience of presenting was a positive one, and our presentation was well-received on the whole. One delegate reacted quite negatively, but I’ve come to think of this as a positive in that it provided a first-hand illustration of the kinds of issues we’d been discussing.
Co-presenting at the conference has given me greater confidence to speak up and give my opinion, and to hopefully help make the changes required so students in the future don’t have to face the same challenges Sabahi and I did.
