Dr. Maha Hosain Aziz focuses on global risk & prediction across varied industries and disciplines. She is a professor in the MA International Relations Program at New York University's Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (NYU GSAS) specializing in global risk, which she also teaches at Pioneer Academics, Global Diplomatic Forum and other e-learning education startups. She is a keynote speaker on global risk and future trends to corporations, governments and at conferences worldwide, represented by the London Speakers Bureau, Speakers Connect and Chartwell Speakers. She is serving on the Global Future Council on Complex Risks at the World Economic Forum through 2024. She is a global citizen with strong Pakistani Muslim roots who grew up in seven countries in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe and the US.
Professor Aziz is also an author who launched her first bestselling, seven-time award-winning book on global risk, FUTURE WORLD ORDER in 2019 with fellowship support from the London School of Economics' Institute of Global Affairs; she launched the second edition (2020) at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London; from 2019-2021, 15% of her book profits went to her brother's memorial fund for Syrian refugee youth via charity Peace & Sport. The sequel, GLOBAL SPRING (2023), offers predictions for a post-pandemic world, as we navigate heightened global risk shaped by war, climate and technology. The final book in the trilogy is 10 SHOCK EVENTS BY 2030 (2024).
She is also a cartoonist who has created the ten-time award-winning VR/AR political comic book for tweens with London-based edtech partner Musemio and Rome-based contributor AR Market – this is a spinoff of her seven-time award-winning debut political comic book, The Global Kid (2016). She is also working on Evolution (2024) – a comic book about global extremism partly created by generative AI. Dr. Aziz is a former Businessweek columnist and Huffington Post/Medium blogger; on occasion she contributes to Newsweek and Time, and consults on risk with governments and corporates via geopolitical crowdsourced consultancy Wikistrat and other networks.
Previously, Dr. Aziz was also a senior fellow at New York City think tank, World Policy Institute. She served as chairwoman of a small team that co-launched the New Silk Road Generation, the first e-mentoring program for university students in Afghanistan. She was a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Politics and International Studies Department at the University of London's SOAS focused on South Asian politics. She taught an undergraduate course on British politics and democratic institutions at the London School of Economics (LSE), winning three teaching awards. At the LSE, she was the C&J Modi/Narayanan Fellow while pursuing her doctoral research on the moral economy.
Before her Ph.D., she worked in investment banking and media; she earned a Bachelor's at Brown University, a Master's at Columbia University, a Master's at the LSE, and a research certification in Leveraging Crowds in the Public Sector at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.