Dr. Shibley Rahman is an academic. Elected to a Queen’s Scholarship at Westminster School in 1987, he subsequently went to Jesus College, University of Cambridge in 1993. He obtained the second highest First in the Natural Sciences Tripos in neuroscience in 1996, being awarded his BA(Hons.) degree in 1996. After the customary award at Cambridge of his M.A. in 1999, he was awarded his Ph.D. also from Cambridge, for a thesis on the early diagnosis of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia in 2001 (no corrections were advised to the University). His paper on the specific pathology of the prefrontal cortex in this type of dementia is considered a seminal contribution in its field, paving the way for a better understanding of the disorder; it has been quoted more than 280 times to date, and is cited in the current chapter on dementia in the latest edition of the Oxford Textbook of Dementia.
Having graduated with his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 2001, he then went onto receive the Diploma of the Membership of Royal Colleges of Physicians (MRCP(UK)) in May 2005. Dr Rahman also completed a post-doctoral academic fellowship at the Institute of Neurology at Queen Square, London, and has published papers in international journals on the freezing-of-gait and quality-of-life of individuals with Parkinson’s disease. His continues to be actively interested in the functioning of the brain through participation in the social brain project as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Commerce and Entrepreneurship.
Dr. Shibley Rahman has been successfully in recovery from alcohol from June 2007 to the present day. With the support of student enrolment from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, he has been able to pursue the Legal Practice Course at BPP Law School, Holborn, London, as a full-time student from January 2012. On 1 June 2007, he was admitted with acute meningitis to the Royal Free NHS Hampstead, having sustained an asystolic cardiac arrest and an epileptic seizure. Previously able-bodied, Dr Rahman was able to survive a six-week coma in 2007, and learnt how to walk again. Originally in a wheelchair as a clinical inpatient in neurorehabilitation at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, where he had been on the cognitive disorders and movement disorders firms in 2002, he completed his Graduate Diploma and Law and Bachelor of Law from BPP Law School in March 2009.
Thereafter, Dr. Shibley Rahman completed his Master of Law by distance learning from the College of Law of England and Wales, whilst volunteering part-time for the Head Office of the British Lung Foundation, successfully awarded with a Commendation in January 2011. Sarah Lewis, publications officer of the BLF at the time, provides this testimonial:
“I loved working with Shibley. Shibley is vastly intelligent – and his degrees and qualifications speak for themselves. For all of his achievements Shibley is an incredibly humble and lovely person to work with. He happily shares his knowlege with all. He enjoys discussing research in law and medicine and has an interest in publishing and design software. Shibley is always learning something new and would be a valuable asset to any organisation.”
In May 2012, Dr Shibley Rahman was the first person in his full-time cohort at BPP Business School to be awarded the Master of Business Administration, where his examination script on corporate social responsibility and strategy was highly commended (heavily influenced by Prof Michael Porter’s work on corporate strategy and society).
Dr Shibley Rahman has been an active member of the UK Labour Party since 2010, though he has always been a Labour voter from 1990 onwards. He had previously attended meetings of the Fabian Society, and indeed attended Conference in Manchester and in Liverpool in 2010 and 2011, respectively. His official local constituency is the Holborn and St Pancras Ward, and he attended the last ever leadership hustings of Ed Miliband hosted by Frank Dobson MP at Haverstock Hill in September 2010.
Dr Shibley Rahman is very much interested in education. He established a free website for junior physicians wishing to attempt the MRCP(UK) examination (called “The MRCP Guide”), and has also published three best-selling books for to guide junior physicians, on Part 1, Part 2, and the PACES part of this difficult entrance examination to the Specialist Registrar grade in hospital medicine.
Dr Rahman therefore has a robust interest in health and medicine, business, natural sciences and law, having been trained to postgraduate level in all these disciplines. With a recent interest in international commercial law, he runs the popular ‘LegalAware‘ blog, which represents the Legal Awareness Society, an independent student society at BPP Law School. This educational background gives him an unique insight into specific policy areas of interest, including responsible capitalism and the privatisation of the NHS. For example, he remains part of a group of health-policy academics writing on the strategic change of the NHS, and this is reflected in his specialist healthcare blogging for the Socialist Health Association. He recently wrote a book review for the prestigious World Economics journal on happiness and behavioural economics, and well-being is currently the subject of his fourth book, being written with the help of seven professors, to be published in May 2013.
