Hi, I’m Sobia Ali-Faisal.
If you’ve landed here, you probably found me through Un/Earth, my space for digging into the questions that matter most to me: justice, belonging, and how we can create liberated futures together.
But who is the person behind the questions?
My Journey
I’m an applied social psychologist by training, a researcher by discipline, and a community organizer by calling.
With a PhD in Applied Social Psychology, I’ve built a career at the intersection of scholarship, public health, and community wellbeing. My research on Muslim sexual health, sexual guilt and anxiety, and how Muslim men conceptualize masculinity and violence has taken me into uncomfortable places. It has taught me that the most important truths are often the ones we’re most afraid to name.
In 2021, my work on Islamic antipatriarchal liberation psychology received the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology. That framework for decolonizing psychology for Muslims is the kind of work I care most about: not just critiquing what’s broken, but building something better.
I co-founded BIPOC USHR in 2019 and served as its inaugural Executive Director. I now continue that work as past chair of the Board. Across university administration, community organizations, and public health settings, I’ve built structures, relationships, and programs that centre marginalized communities.
I’ve also been writing publicly since 2007, first at Muslimah Media Watch, analyzing how Muslim women are represented in media, and later in outlets like The Huffington Post. Un/Earth is where that practice has landed now.
What Un/Earth Means
I’ll be honest: I named this Un/Earth before I fully knew what it meant.
What I knew was that I wanted a space to dig into justice, into belonging, into the futures we’re told are impossible. And I wanted a name that could hold both the uncovering and the unsettling, because that’s what this work actually feels like.
The slash is the whole point. It’s the space between unearthing, digging up what’s been buried, the truths and histories and possibilities that were always there, and un-earthing, unsettling what we thought was solid ground, letting go of what we were told to stand on.
Both are necessary. You cannot plant something better without first turning the soil.
Un/Earth is what I’m still figuring out. Maybe that’s the point. Some things are meant to be unearthed slowly, and together.
What You’ll Find Here
- Reflections on justice, liberation, and belonging, written from lived experience, not abstraction
- Questions I’m sitting with, rather than answers I’ve perfected
- Threads connecting the personal to the political, the spiritual to the structural
- Honesty about the messiness of this work, because liberation isn’t a clean process
A Little More About Me
- I’m based in Canada
- I’m an educator, facilitator, and organizer, and I’m still learning from every room I enter
- My work has been featured in CBC, Refinery29, and Teen Vogue, where my research on Muslim sexual health reached an audience far beyond academia, which is exactly where I want it to live
- I’m currently writing two books: one non-fiction, on building liberated futures, and one fantasy, set in the world of South Asian pop culture. I’ve stopped thinking of them as separate projects. Liberated futures need both truth-telling and imagination
- You can usually find me deep in a true crime podcast. They’re disturbing, I know. But there’s something comforting in watching justice get worked out, even slowly, even imperfectly.
Why I Write
I write because I believe in the power of uncovered truths to plant something better. I write because someone, somewhere, might read a sentence here and feel less alone in their own questions. I write because the futures we’re dreaming of require us to practice them now, in how we think, how we relate, how we tell the truth.
Work With Me
If you’ve been reading here and wondering whether this thinking could translate into your organization, my answer is yes.
I co-run Seed Room Consulting with my friend and collaborator Mueni Mutinda. We’ve been friends for thirty years, and we built Seed Room to bring that same trust, history, and long-term commitment to the organizations we work with.
We work with community organizations, public institutions, government bodies, businesses, and individual leaders who are ready to move past performative commitments to equity and do the deeper work: examining power, shifting culture, and reimagining what’s possible. Our practice includes equity audits, strategic planning, workshops and training, research and program evaluation, coaching, and speaking engagements.
Rooted in spiritual traditions and shaped by anti-oppression and decolonial lenses, we believe liberation isn’t given. It’s grown. And we’re here to grow it with you.
Visit Seed Room Consulting → www.seedroom.ca
Let’s Walk Together
This isn’t a one-way street. If something here resonates, unsettles, or sparks something in you, feel free to comment.
We’re planting something. Come grow with us.
