Shamim Chowdhury

Shamim Ara Chowdhury is an English television and print journalist.

Early life and education Chowdhury was born into a Bengali Muslim Chowdhury family in England, United Kingdom. Her parents migrated from Sylhet, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. Muhammad Ataul Gani Osmani, the commander-in-chief of the Bengali liberation forces, is her great-uncle and grew up in the same household as her paternal grandfather, Azadur Rahman Chowdhury, who himself was the postmaster general of the Sylhet district.

Chowdhury has a BSc from Queen Mary University, a MSc from Birkbeck College, and a post-graduate diploma in newspaper journalism from City University London.

Career Chowdhury started out in print journalism She was involved in a wide range of stories for the channel, including the 2013 Ukraine crisis, the collapse of the Rana Plaza building complex in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi elections. She was regarded as the channel's Bangladesh expert. During this time she has reported from inside Syria, Iraq, South Korea, Jerusalem, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and many European countries. She also produced and reported an exclusive series of reports on Bangladesh's burgeoning economy, including a half-hour documentary of the subject.

Her interviews include former Prime Minister of Turkey Binali Yıldırım; Gowher Rizvi, the International Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh; and Kamal Hossain, a founding leader of Bangladesh.

She has also written extensively for The Huffington Post on a wide range of socio-political issues.

Personal life Chowdhury is a Muslim and lives in West London. She has visited more than 65 countries including parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. On one occasion, she worked with a leading charity to help build a community centre in a remote part of Cambodia.