Shabna is CEO of the Runnymede Trust.

Dr Shabna Begum joined the Runnymede Trust in 2021 as a Senior Researcher and worked her way up to become Director of Research before being appointed as CEO in May 2024.

Her work has been at the heart of all the Runnymede Trust’s recent projects, including our research on police in schools, art curriculum, the cost-of-living crisis, the experiences of women of colour in the workplace, and racism in migration debates.Before Runnymede, she was a teacher for over 2 decades, teaching Politics and Sociology in London secondary comprehensive schools. She completed her PhD at Queen Mary University London, School of Geography where she remains an Honorary Research Fellow. She is also author of, From Sylhet to Spitalfields: Bengali squatters in 1970s East London (2023).