Myriam François

Myriam François (born and legally named Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan François; December 1982[1]), formerly known as Myriam François-Cerrah, is an English journalist, filmmaker and writer. Her work has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. She is the founder and CEO[3] of production company mpwr productions, which specialises in documentary films which centre on minoritised voices.

Myriam François
Born
Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan François

December 1982 (age 40)[1]
Camden, London, England[2]
NationalityBritish, French
Education
Occupation(s)Journalist, filmmaker, writer, academic, former child actress
Websitewww.myriamfrancois.com

Early life and career

François was born in Camden, London, to an Irish mother and a French father.[4] She attended a French school in London and is bilingual. She was born Emilie François, but changed her name when she became Muslim in 2004.

François was a child actress whose performance in Oscar-winning film Sense and Sensibility (1995) playing Margaret Dashwood earned her critical acclaim.[5] She went on to appear in Paws (1997), alongside Billy Connolly and Nathan Cavaleri, and in New Year's Day (2001).[6][7]

Education

François holds an MA from Georgetown University (United States) and a BA from Cambridge University (UK). She completed her PhD (DPhil) at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco, in 2017.[8][9][10][11]

Career

François was an assistant editor and features writer at Emel magazine (2008–2009). She translated Asma Lamrabet's book[12] which won the English Pen Award.

François began her career in documentary filmmaking as a presenter and producer at the BBC. Her first documentary on BBC One, A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited (2015), was nominated for the Sandford St Martin Religious Programming Award in 2016.[13] In 2016, she presented her second documentary, The Muslim Pound (2016), which explores the growing consumer goods market for Muslims in the UK.[14] She was also a programme researcher and presenter at the corporation where she was a regular guest on its flagship channel's The Big Questions from 2008 to 2011[15] and on Sunday Morning Live also in 2015.[16][17] François then worked as a programme producer on Al Jazeera English's Head to Head.[18]

In 2017, François presented The Truth About Muslim Marriage (Channel 4, 2017), which was nominated for Best Investigative Documentary at the Asian Media Awards in 2018.[19][20] François then joined TRT World as Europe correspondent, covering European breaking news. Between 2017 and 2018, she also developed, produced and presented Compass, a monthly arts and culture documentary for the channel.[21]

In 2019, François left TRT World and began working with BBC World Service, where she produced and presented a series of short documentaries, including Tariq Ramadan: #MeToo in the Muslim World (2018), and Is Brexit-Voting Llanelli Changing Its Mind? (2019) which looks at the impact of Brexit in Llanelli, a Leave-voting town in Wales.[22][23] In 2019, her documentary City of Refuge, which examined the plight of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, aired on BBC Radio 4 in April and on BBC World service in May.[24] In 2022, she presented the BBC World Service audio documentary When Rape Becomes a Crime, which focuses on rape laws in Senegal.[25] François also began hosting and producing The Big Picture: France in Focus, a four-part series for Al Jazeera English focused on the fault lines within French society.[26]

Writing

François was a correspondent for the Huffington Post (2014–2015), where she broke a headline story on an exclusive 36-page document written by alleged al-Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.[27] She has appeared on Newsnight (2009), 4thought.tv (2011),[28] BBC News (2010),[29] Crosstalk (2010), BBC Radio (2012), Sky News[11] and documentaries including Divine Women, presented by Bettany Hughes.[30]

A former columnist at the New Statesman, François's writing has featured in the British press, including The Guardian, TIME, Foreign Policy, The Telegraph, CNN online and Middle East Eye.[31][32][33][34][35][36]

François is a former Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Policy (CGP), a think tank where, between 2019 and 2020, she produced an in-depth report looking at the plight of European children of ISIS fighters in camps in Northern Syria, as well as an accompanying piece for Foreign Policy. She has been an outspoken critic of Islamophobia.[37] She is a former research associate at School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (SOAS), in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East, where she researched issues related to British Muslims, integration, and racism.

Her articles also appeared in The Huffington Post,[38] New Statesman,[39] Your Middle East,[40] The London Paper, Jadaliyya,[41] the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,[42] The Daily Telegraph,[43] Salon,[44] Index on Censorship,[45] The F-Word,[46] and the magazine Emel.[47]

Other work

François gave guest lectures at Harvard University (2014), the University of Birmingham (2014), and Luther College (2015) in Decorah, Iowa, and presented an annual guest lecture at Kingston University, in England, in 2012–2014. She spoke at the 2015 HowTheLightsGetsIn at the Hay-on-Wye Festival.[48] She has been a regular presenter at high-profile events, including the Mayor of London's Eid Festival 2019[49] and the London Modest Fashion Festival 2018.[50]

She was a judge for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction books.[51]

Personal life

In 2003, at the age of 21, François converted to Islam after graduating from Cambridge. At the time, she was a sceptical Roman Catholic. She rejects the use of the words "convert" and "revert" as "exclusionary", describing herself as "just Muslim".[52]

François chose to stop wearing a hijab in the 2010s. She said that the subsequent lack of Islamophobia due to her being a white woman in a Western dress made her feel enmeshed in white privilege. Nevertheless, she did not decide to return to the hijab.[2]

Filmography
  • A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited, BBC One, 2015 (presenter)
  • Srebrenica Massacre - Explained in Under 2 Minutes, BBC News, 2015 (presenter)
  • The Muslim Pound, BBC One, 2016 (presenter)
  • The Truth About Muslim Marriage, Channel 4, 2017 (presenter)
  • Compass series, TRT World, 2018–19 (presenter/producer)
    • Witnesses of Stone
    • Crafting an Identity - 'Britishness' After Brexit
    • Art Against All Odds
  • Tariq Ramadan: The Rock Star Scholar and the Rape Claims, BBC News, 2018 (presenter/producer)
  • City of Refuge, BBC Radio 4, 2019 (presenter/producer)
  • Is Brexit-Voting Llaneli Changing Its Mind?, BBC News, 2019 (presenter/producer)
  • When Rape Becomes a Crime, BBC Radio 4, 2022 (presenter/producer)
  • France in Focus series, Al Jazeera English, 2022 (presenter/producer)
    • The Big Picture
    • Flirting with the Far Right
    • The Legacy of Colonialism in France
  • Finding Aicha, BBC's Our World/BBC Arabic/CBC, 2023 (director/producer)

References
  1. "Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan FRANCOIS". Companies House. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
  2. François, Myriam. "Muslim, 'white' & seeking new forms of solidarity: Myriam François" (Interview). Interviewed by The Demented Goddess. The Demented Goddess. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  3. "MPWR Productions". MPWR Productions. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  4. Miriam O'Reilly (8 September 2011). "Heart and Soul: Muslim White Female". BBC Sounds (Podcast). BBC World Service. Event occurs at 03:21. Myriam François-Cerrah, daughter of a French father and an Irish mother...
  5. Lee, Ang (26 January 1996), Sense and Sensibility (Drama, Romance), Columbia Pictures, Mirage Enterprises, retrieved 12 January 2023
  6. Zwicky, Karl (25 September 1997), Paws (Adventure, Family, Fantasy), Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC), Latent Image Productions Pty. Ltd., New South Wales Film & Television Office, retrieved 12 January 2023
  7. Krishnamma, Suri (2 November 2001), New Year's Day (Drama), Flashpoint (I), Alchymie, Liberator Productions, retrieved 12 January 2023
  8. "Dr Myriam François". Muslim Women's Council. Board Member
  9. François, Myriam; Bethsabée Souris (2018). "Authors". Al-Andalus' lessons for contemporary European models of integration. New Direction. p. 4.
  10. "Dr Myriam Francois". Specialist Speakers.
  11. "Myriam Francois". New Lines Institute.
  12. "Women in the Qur'an: An Emancipatory Reading". Kube Publishing. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  13. "BBC One - A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited". BBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  14. "BBC One - The Muslim Pound". BBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  15. "One Programmes – The Big Questions, Series 3, Episode 5". BBC. 31 January 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  16. "One Programmes – Series 6 Episode 15". BBC. 4 October 2015. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  17. "One Programmes – Series 6 Episode 15". BBC. 5 July 2015. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  18. "Ebor Lecture: Myriam Francois-Cerrah". higheryork. Archived from the original on 15 February 2019. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  19. "The Truth About Muslim Marriage". True Vision TV. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  20. "Myriam Francois's Channel 4 documentary nominated for Asian Media Award". Northbank Talent Management. 4 October 2018. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  21. "Compass - TRT World". Compass - TRT World. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  22. "The rock star scholar and the rape claims". BBC News. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  23. "Is Brexit-voting Llanelli changing its mind?". BBC News. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  24. "BBC Radio 4 - City of Refuge". BBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  25. "BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, When rape becomes a crime". BBC. 26 May 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  26. "France in Focus". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  27. François-Cerrah, Myriam (14 January 2014). "Mastermind Of The Sept. 11 Attacks Wants To Convert His Captors". The Huffington Post.
  28. "Myriam Francois Cerrah (2011) [Should Muslims adapt to Britain or should Britain adapt to Muslims?]". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 30 September 2011. Alternative titles... 4thought.tv[17/03/2011]
  29. "Impact Asia – A veiled threat or an attack on faith?". BBC News. 13 July 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  30. Divine Women on BBC
  31. "Myriam François". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  32. "Myriam Francois". Time. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  33. François, Myriam (October 2021). "Myriam François". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  34. "Myriam Francois-Cerrah". The Telegraph. 21 November 2017. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  35. Francois, Myriam (7 September 2016). "Forget the burkini ban: France's Muslims have much bigger problems". CNN. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  36. "Myriam François". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  37. "Myriam François". Foreign Policy. October 2021. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  38. François-Cerrah, Myriam (26 January 2012). "Why a War With Iran is the Real Threat". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 11 March 2012.
  39. François-Cerrah, Myriam (14 December 2011). "When does it not pay to be Muslim?". The New Statesman. Retrieved 11 March 2012.
  40. François-Cerrah, Myriam (29 April 2013). "Morsi must become a leader for all Egyptians". Your Middle East.
  41. François-Cerrah, Myriam (16 May 2015). "Olivier Roy on Laicite as Ideology, the Myth of 'National Identity' and Racism in the French Republic". Jadaliyya.
  42. François-Cerrah, Myriam (27 April 2015). "Face Veils and Miniskirts: Whose Interests are Served in France's Republic of Men?". ABC (Australia).
  43. François-Cerrah, Myriam (17 July 2014). "Why banning Sharia courts would harm British Muslim women". The Telegraph.
  44. François-Cerrah, Myriam (13 October 2014). "Bill Maher's horrible excuse: Why his defense of Islamophobia just doesn't make any sense". Salon.
  45. François-Cerrah, Myriam (15 January 2011). "Tunisia: France's faux pas". Index on Censorship. Archived from the original on 22 January 2011. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  46. "Articles by Myriam Francois-Cerrah". The F-Word. 20 July 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  47. "Sailing Towards The Divine". Emel. 27 June 2011. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
  48. "Progressive politics takes centre stage at HowTheLightGetsIn". 27 April 2015.
  49. "Everything you need to know about Eid Festival in London". Evening Standard. 6 June 2019. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  50. admin. "We are pleased to announce that Dr Myriam Francois will be hosting Modest Fashion Festival". Modest Fashion Festival. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  51. "Dr Myriam Francois". The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  52. François-Cerrah, Myriam (16 August 2014). "Don't call me "convert" nor "revert" for that matter". Muslimvillage.com. Originally published on 15 June 2013 as a WordPress entry of hers titled Don't call me a "convert"/"revert". Her blog no longer exists.
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