Rushanara Ali

Rushanara Ali is an Associate Director of the Young Foundation. She is responsible for research, international work and external relations. Rushanara joined the Young Foundation in March 2005.

Since joining the Young Foundation, Rushanara has focused on developing the Young Foundation’s research and action research programme. Projects have included; the future of political parties; transforming neighbourhoods, extremism; cities in transition; and British Muslims. She is currently developing four major research strands; on mapping Britain’s needs; health and wellbeing (in collaboration with nef); social innovation; and crime and correctional services.

Rushanara has also initiated the Young Foundation Leadership Programme which is currently underway and being developed through Launchpad. In 2006, working closely with the British Council, she organised a major International conference on social innovation held in Beijing.

More about Rushanara

Before joining the Young Foundation, Rushanara worked at the Communities Directorate of the Home Office, as a Team Leader, taking forward a work programme in response to the 2001 disturbances in the north of England. She has also worked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research and as Parliamentary Assistant to Oona King (former MP for Bethnal Green & Bow). While she was an under-graduate, Rushanara worked as a Research Assistant to Michael Young working on a project which paved the way for the establishment of Tower Hamlets Summer University, a model currently being replicated around London. She also worked as a Marketing Assistant to Languageline, a company founded by Michael Young. Rushanara has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University.

Rushanara is a currently a Commissioner for the London Child Poverty Commission, Chair of Tower Hamlets Summer University and SummerUni London, a Board Member of Tower Hamlets College, a Trustee of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and an advisor to the Spitalfields Festival. She was a member of the Home office Working Group on Preventing Extremism established after the 7/7 London bombings.

Publications

Parties for the Public Good (Fiona Mactaggart, Geoff Mulgan and Rushanara Ali)
Life Begins at 60: What kind of NHS after 2008? (David Boyle, Geoff Mulgan, Rushanara Ali )
Our House? Race and Representation in British Politics (Rushanara Ali and Colm O’Cinneide, IPPR 2002)
Tacking Social Exclusion: Community Organisations in Civil Dialogue (RRA, Berlin, 2001)
Cities in Transition (with Lilli Geissendorfer and Pheobe Griffith)
One year later…(with Geoff Mulgan) Prospect Magazine July 2006
Our riots Prospect Magazine May 2006
The Angry East End (with Kate Gavron) Prospect Magazine April 2006

Contact

Dawn Joseph: dawn.joseph@youngfoundation.org or 020 8709 9290