Sabba Khan

Sabba Khan is a British-Pakistani architect, illustrator, and author born in London. She studied architecture at the University of Greenwich and works as an architect and urban designer. The Roles We Play (2022, Avery Hill Publishing) is her debut graphic memoir, exploring the experience of growing up as a first-generation British-Pakistani woman, navigating between the expectations of her traditional family structure and contemporary British life. Rendered in vivid, richly textured artwork, the book examines how inherited cultural roles shape — and can be reimagined by — women across generations, drawing on Sabba's own experience and those of women in her family. It won the Jhalak Prize in 2022 and was praised as a breakthrough work of British comics and memoir. Khan is also a researcher into spatial inequality and race in the built environment. The Roles We Play was the first graphic novel to win the Jhalak Prize.