Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Yasmin Damji (maiden name)

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, FRSL is Ugandan-born (1949), with an Ismaili background. Having completed her undergraduate degree in English at Makerere University, she moved to the UK in 1972, the same year as the Expulsion Order, to study her master’s degree in literature at Linacre College, University of Oxford. She describes her upbringing in Uganda and her subsequent move to the UK in her culinary journal The Settler's Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food. Alibhai-Brown’s family are part of a larger group of South Asians who have undertaken multiple migrations across generations, eventually settling in the UK.

Alibhai-Brown is a journalist who has written for several news publications including London’s Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the Evening Standard and the Mail. She is the author of several books, and a radio and television broadcaster. She is known for her commentary on immigration, Islam and diversity. She is married to Colin Brown, previously to Shiraz Alibhai (divorced), and has two children.

In 2001 Alibhai-Brown was appointed to the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). In 2003 she returned the award in protest at the conflict in Iraq. She has won several awards for her journalism. In 2022 she was elected to the Royal Society of Literature as a Fellow.