Bold Steps: Fireside chat with Dr Saleyha Ahsan
Tue, 27 Feb
|Cambridge
Join us for a fireside chat with Dr Saleyha Ahsan and hear how she carved out a tremendous career from STEMM, frontline military personnel in the British Army, to presenting on the BBC and ITV and a participant on Bear Grylls.
Time & Location
27 Feb 2024, 18:30 – 20:00
Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory, JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK
About the event
Join us for a fireside chat with Dr Saleyha Ahsan and hear how she carved out a tremendous career from STEMM, frontline military personnel in the British Army, to presenting on the BBC and ITV and a participant on Bear Grylls.
She is currently examining the impact of attacks against healthcare in conflict zones as a Sociology PhD student at Magdalene College, Cambridge. All whilst a practising emergency medicine doctor in intensive care.
Dr Saleyha Ahsan is a British medical doctor, presenter and journalist. She has worked as a humanitarian doctor on the frontline in conflict zones and as an A&E doctor in the UK, presented programmes including Trust Me I’m a Doctor and reported on conflict, social affairs, medicine, healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Salyeha Ahsan started her journey in STEMM, graduating with an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University of Salford. She was the first British Muslim woman to attend the integrated male and female Royal Military Academy Sandhurst’s Officer commissioning course. She achieved the rank of Captain in the British Army, and served in Bosnia as part of the NATO stabilisation force, completing three years in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Medical Support Officer.
Dr Salyeha Ahsan qualified as a doctor (MB ChB) in 2006 at the University of Dundee School of Medicine, and went on to gain her Masters in Laws in International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law in 2011 from the University of Essex. She worked as a humanitarian doctor in Libya during the Arab Spring in 2011, and then in Syria in 2013.
In 2008 her short film My Mother’s Daughter won Best European Film at Los Angeles film festival, Pangea. In 2018 she appeared on Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls on Channel 4.
Saleyha has also gone on to stand as a candidate for the European Parliament election, and the UK general election.
She is currently examining the impact of attacks against healthcare in conflict zones as a Sociology PhD student at Magdalene College, Cambridge.