Ms Maha Hosain Aziz

Maha Hosain Aziz teaches master's courses on the moral economy and political opinion writing in the Politics Department at New York University (NYU). She is also a Research Associate in the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS) at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

As an Asia Insight columnist for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, she covers political risk and strategy. She has written about varied topics since 2009, including tackling perceived ethnic inequality in post-war Sri Lanka; reducing the potential for unrest among South Asia's unemployed youth; and preventing further militant recruitment of the chronically unemployed in Pakistan. She is working on a book that was inspired by her column.

In 2009-11, she was a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Politics and International Studies Department at SOAS. She taught an undergraduate course on democracy, development and militant groups in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan. Previously, she taught an undergraduate course on British politics and democratic institutions at the London School of Economics (LSE), winning one university-wide teaching excellence award and two departmental teaching prizes.

As the C&J Modi/Narayanan Fellow at the LSE, she conducted her doctoral research on the moral economy – a topic she is converting into a journal publication. Before her PhD, she worked in investment banking and media. She also earned a bachelors in international relations at Brown University, a masters in international affairs at Columbia University and a masters in comparative politics at the LSE.

Here is a sample of her Bloomberg BusinessWeek column:

• Tackling Perceived Ethnic Inequality in Post-War Sri Lanka
• Defusing South Asia's Demographic Timebomb
• Reducing Militant Recruitment in Pakistan through Job Creation

Democratization, Development, Militancy; Moral Economy, Expectation, Legitimacy