Myriam Francois Cerrah

Myriam Francois Cerrah, born Emilie Siobhan Geoghegan François in December 1982 in Camden, London, England, UK, has established a multifaceted career spanning journalism, filmmaking, and academia. She completed her BA in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University and an MA in Arab Studies, specializing in Middle East politics, from Georgetown University. In 2017, she earned her DPhil from Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco. Her early career included work as a child actress, notably as Margaret Dashwood in the 1995 film “Sense and Sensibility.” She later transitioned to media, adopting the name Myriam Francois after converting to Islam in 2003.

Her career in media began with roles as an assistant editor and features writer at Emel magazine (2008–2009) and at the Islam Channel. She translated Asma Lamrabet’s book “Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading,” which received the English Pen Award. Myriam expanded into documentary filmmaking as a presenter and producer for the BBC. Her first BBC One documentary, “A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited” (2015), was nominated for the Sandford St Martin Religious Programming Award. She continued to produce and present impactful documentaries, including “The Muslim Pound” (2016) for BBC One, exploring the Muslim consumer market in the UK, and “The Truth About Muslim Marriage” (2017) for Channel 4, which was nominated for Best Investigative Documentary at the Asian Media Awards in 2018. From 2017 to 2018, she worked as a Europe correspondent for TRT World and developed, produced, and presented the monthly arts and culture documentary series “Compass.”

In 2019, Myriam joined BBC World Service, creating a series of short documentaries such as “Tariq Ramadan: #MeToo in the Muslim World” (2018) and “Is Brexit-Voting Llanelli Changing Its Mind?” (2019). Her documentary “City of Refuge” (2019) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. In 2022, she presented the BBC World Service audio documentary “When Rape Becomes a Crime.” She also hosted and produced “The Big Picture: France in Focus,” a four-part series for Al Jazeera English. Myriam is also a prolific writer, with her work featured in publications such as The Guardian, TIME, Foreign Policy, and The Telegraph. She served as a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy (2019-2020) and a research associate at SOAS University of London, focusing on issues related to British Muslims and Islamophobia. In 2021, she founded MPWR Productions, specializing in documentaries highlighting minority voices.