Sadiya joined the University of Birmingham as an Associate Professor in Sociology in January 2024 having previously held academic posts at HPP, Manchester Metropolitan University (2017-2023) and at SPIR, Queen Mary University (2015-2017). Prior to this, Sadiya was a post-doctoral research fellow at IGPA, The University of Canberra, Australia, where she worked on an Australian Research Council-funded project exploring alternative forms of political mobilisation in a cross-national study of Australia, Denmark and the UK (2013-2015). Sadiya began her academic career with a PhD in POLSIS at the University of Birmingham (2006-2011).   

Throughout her career, Sadiya has combined empirical research with conceptual analysis to help further the field of the politics of race in the UK and globally. 

Research interests 

• Race and racism, particularly a critique of core concepts such as unconscious bias, institutional racism, decolonisation.
• Political mobilisation of racially marginalised groups. To date Sadiya’s research has explored race-rioting, politics of the incarcerated, institutional racism in The Metropolitan Police, Muslim women’s experiences of racism and political mobilisation.
• Agency and the unconscious  
• Critical realism as an approach to socio-political critique
• The work of Pierre Bourdieu, particularly his notion of habitus and institutions
• The political theory of Hannah Arendt - a decolonial critique
• Consociationalism – power sharing in divided societies    

Current projects 

• What can New Institutionalism tell us about Institutional Racism?  A Case Study of The Metropolitan Police.
• Consociationalism in Northern Ireland: A Politics of Smoothness? A Critical Race Theory Perspective