About
Um-E-Aymen is an award-winning multilingual sports journalist, commentator and presenter working at the intersection of sports, race and class.
She won the Hugh Cudlipp Journalist Award 2022 for her debut piece in Wisden’s quarterly, The Nightwatchman, writing about institutional racism in the wake of the Azeem Rafiq scandal.
Her exclusive piece in The Telegraph looked at how women were affected by Cricket Scotland’s racism scandal and won the NCTJ Sports Journalist of the Year Award 2022.
She won the ‘highly commended’ at the Vikki Orvice Football Writer of the Year Award 2022.
Um-E-Aymen graduated with a First-Class Honours in English Literature from Queen Mary University of London where her research explored the question: ‘Can the colonial institution of cricket make space for post-colonial practices?’ using works by C.L.R. James.
In 2021, she graduated from the University of Cambridge with an M.Phil. in South Asian Studies where she wrote about how sports is used as a language between cultures in South Asia.
She has also worked on the social and cultural history of South Asia. Her postgraduate thesis explored ‘Language, History and Memory in literary narratives of the Partition of South Asia, 1947’ using texts by Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai and Intizar Hussain.
Um-E-Aymen was also awarded the inaugural BCOMS X Chelsea Foundation scholarship to study for her NCTJ and currently works as a journalist at BBC Sport.
Awards and nominations
Shortlisted: Asian Media Award ‘Outstanding Young Journalist’ 2023
AIPS Media Young Reporter 2023 (5th place in Europe)
Hugh Cudlipp Journalist Award 2022
NCTJ Sports Journalist of the Year 2022
‘Highly commended’ Vikki Orvice Football Writer of the Year Award 2022
BCOMS x Chelsea Foundation inaugural scholarship 2022