Azra Syed

Azra Syed is a journalist, author, AI consultant, and PhD Researcher in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS University of London. 

Her doctoral research, Misogyny as Political Radicalisation: A Transnational Study of Young Males from Online Hate to Honour Killing, examines how digital misogyny, grievance-based online cultures, and patriarchal power structures converge to radicalise young men across Pakistan and the UK. 

Bringing together feminist political theory, radicalisation studies, and comparative politics, her work explores how online hate discourses evolve into offline forms of gendered violence, including honour-based abuse within South Asian diaspora communities. Azra’s research interests include digital hate ecosystems, political masculinities, honour-based violence, algorithmic misogyny, online grievance networks, and transnational feminist activism. She is particularly interested in the influence of social media influencers, male-supremacist digital subcultures, and polarised algorithmic environments on young men’s attitudes towards gender and power. 

Her wider work examines how legal frameworks, community norms, and state institutions reproduce gendered hierarchies and shape vulnerability, violence, and resistance. Before joining SOAS, Azra built an extensive career in investigative journalism and human rights reporting. She has worked with The News International, Reuters Karachi (TNN), and various international organisations, producing deeply researched stories on women’s rights, child protection, internal displacement, environmental degradation, and social justice. 

Her investigative exposé, Edhi Homes: Homes to Muffled Cries, remains one of her most widely circulated works, documenting systemic abuses in institutional care homes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she created The COVID-19 Diaries, a global documentation project capturing stories of loss, resilience, and survival. 

Azra is the author of four books—Ethical Intelligence, Think, Automate and Grow Rich, WFH During the Pandemic and Beyond, and The Power of Acceptance. Beyond academia, she is the founder of Inner Light Tales, a mental-health storytelling initiative that combines narrative practices with AI-supported emotional wellness tools. She is also an AI and chatbot consultant, leading AI & Chatbot Services Pro, where she designs innovative conversational systems, develops accessible digital tools for small organisations, and promotes ethical, human-centred approaches to AI adoption. 

Her dual background in journalism and AI allows her to bridge technology, communication, and feminist ethics in both her academic and professional work. At SOAS, Azra actively contributes to the wider academic and institutional community. She serves as a Research Students Association (RSA) Representative, Department Research Representative for Politics and International Studies, and a member of the Research & Knowledge Exchange Committee (RKEC). She also sits on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, supporting initiatives to strengthen inclusive research culture, student wellbeing, and equitable academic practices across the university. 

Azra’s academic work is grounded in lived experience of honour-based restrictions, exclusion from education, and navigating patriarchal structures in Pakistan and the UK. She brings a critical, empathetic, and intersectional perspective to her research, aiming to contribute to policy debates, digital literacy, and feminist strategies that address the continuum between online misogyny and offline gendered harm.

• Digital misogyny and online hate ecosystems
• Political masculinities and gendered grievance cultures
• Honour-based violence and transnational South Asian communities
• Algorithmic misogyny and the role of AI, ranking systems, and platform infrastructures
• Online radicalisation, male-supremacist digital subcultures, and influencer masculinity
• Feminist political theory and comparative gender regimes
• Diaspora politics, community norms, and cultural regulation of gender
• State institutions, legal frameworks, and gendered vulnerability
• Ethical, human-centred AI, chatbot design, and digital wellbeing technologies

www.innerlightales.com

www.aichatservicespro.com