Fayiza Puthiya Peedikayil

IAS Early Career Fellow & Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant

School of Law
S2.01, Social Sciences Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

Bio

Ummul Fayiza is an Early Career Fellow (Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick) and a Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant at Warwick Law School. She has submitted her thesis titled ‘Destitute’ Muslim Women and Muslim Personal Law Reform in Postcolonial India: A Critical Analysis of Muslim Women’s Rights Discourse in the Light of Shah Bano and Shayara Bano Cases. Her research critically examines legal reforms concerning Muslim women’s rights to maintenance and divorce within the legal plural context of postcolonial India.

Before joining Warwick, Fayiza was awarded an MPhil in Women's Rights and Personal Law Reform in India from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She also holds an MA in Political Science from JNU and a BA(H) in Political Science from Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi.

Teaching Publication

Listed below are my publications in English, except for the book. In addition, I have published approximately 48 articles in Malayalam language across various magazines and newspapers, which are available on my Academia.edu page: https://warwick.academia.edu/UmmulFayiza

Book

2020 Islamika Feminism (Islamic Feminism), (Calicut: Other Books) (240 pages).

Journal Article

2021 From Shah Bano to Shayara Bano (1985–2017): Changing Feminist Positions on the Politics of Muslim Personal Law, Women’s Rights and Minority Rights in India. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 41 (1): 122-140.

Book Chapter

2022 The Evolution of Muslim Women’s Political Subjectivity in India: Critical Reading in the Context of Muslim Personal Law in India. In Research in the Islamic Context: Political and Methodological Reflections from South Asia, Indian Ocean and the Arab World, edited by M. H Ilias, 161-182 (Delhi: Routledge).

Book Review

2022 Review of Gendering Minorities: Muslim Women and the Politics of Modernity by Sherin. B.S (Orient Blackswan, 2021). Seminar Magazine 752.

Awards and Recognition

2025 Early Career Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick

2024 G. N. Pillai endowment award by the Kerala Literary Academy and supported by the state government of Kerala. The award is for the non-fiction category (for authors under the age of 40), for the book Islamika Feminism written in Malayalam language, originally published in 2020, was recognised for its second edition (2023).

2022 Featured in Rising Beyond the Ceiling: 100 Inspiring Muslim Women of Kerala.

2022 Chancellor’s International Scholarship, University of Warwick.

2018 Junior Research Fellowship, University Grants Commission, India.

2014 The Nirman Foundation Fellowship, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.