Lailah Choudhry                      Senior Semiotician

Lailah has loved words since she was little, from reading in the dark (much to her mum’s disdain) to writing impassioned ‘letters’ to the government. Her fascination led her to study English at the University of Nottingham, before delving deeper into the power of language through an MA in Applied Linguistics at UCL. 

Born and raised in East London where she is immersed in global languages and practices, Lailah is inspired by the semiotics of cultural diversity. Her obsession with words extends to knowledge of Urdu, Punjabi, German and Arabic – as well as a deep love for her native London slang sociolect. She is captivated by cross-cultural connections and hybridity, be it the emergence of chicken shops (which she regularly frequents) as a community hub or fusion music genres like ‘Ragaton’ Ghazals as a form of social protest. 

In her spare time, you might find Lailah on the tube mapping urban space to Grime lyrics, onstage spitting bars from her poetry or taking low quality photos of the moon. 

 

Lailah Choudhry: