Taqwa Sadiq

MA ETHNOGRAPHIC AND DOCUMENTARY FILM, UCL

As an interdisciplinary researcher and visual artist, I am interested in how film, art, and design can be used to explore historical and post-colonial notions of identity, Islam, and social-spatial organisation.

During my BA Middle Eastern Studies (University of Cambridge), I realised that the rewriting of colonially-informed narratives is essential to challenge assumptions and foster more nuanced, critical thinking within British Muslim and wider non-Muslim communities.

Undertaking traditional Islamic studies at Ebrahim College and Cambridge Muslim College afforded me insight into the relevance of Islamic paradigms to post-colonial experiences. Living abroad in Iran and Jordan, revealed to me the potential to bring such useful but esoteric academic discourse into the universal language of film through human story-telling.

For me, the power of visual imagery to immortalise and express concepts in a way that words cannot is evident in how Islamic heritage has successfully preserved its core ideas and values through art and architecture. Film is a relatively new media that can celebrate and contribute to this heritage.