Dr. Khadijah Ibrahiim

Khadijah Ibrahiim is a Leeds-born multidisciplinary research artist, poet, curator, and literary activist of Jamaican heritage. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Leeds, she connects poetry, performance, theatre, and live arts through a diasporic futurist lens, blending oral traditions, cultural memory, and experimental storytelling.

Hailed by the BBC as one of Yorkshire’s most prolific poets, she is the founder and Artistic Director of Leeds Young Authors and Executive Producer of the award-winning documentary We Are Poets. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including Magma, Stand, Weighted Words, More Fyah, Sanctuary and Red. Her collection Another Crossing, published by Peepal Tree Press explores migration and black British identity.

Her commissions include Dead and Wake for Opera North and Leeds Playhouse, Sorrel & Black Cake: A Windrush Story, Hair Stories, I Was a Stranger – Prince Alemayehu, and the Black British Sound System Symposium, which contributed to Collections in Verse with the British Library and Leeds Central Library. During the pandemic, she created My Body is a Protest, a live arts installation.

Alongside lecturing, keynote speaking, and performing internationally, Khadijah has held writer-in-residence positions with El Gouna Writes in Egypt, the British Council Verbalised programme in South Africa, First Story UK, and Africa Week at the University of Leeds. Guest artist and writer Phoenix Dance Theatre, and The Performance Ensemble.  She also curated Africa Writes 2022 for the Royal African Society. Founder curator of Dress Me Beautiful Style and Stories. Guest artist and mentor with the National Poetry Centre and FLUP Festival Brazil, and the librettist for the Royal Ballet and Opera for Sing, Dance, Leap, created in celebration of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.