Maha Rafi Atal, University of Glasgow, takes a political economy approach to the study of corporate power. Her current book project, examines “corporate social responsibility” as a system of Company Rule, tracing its history from colonial trading corporations to contemporary multinationals. She is also interested in how corporations exercise influence in the media and in politics, in the political power of internet platform companies, and in corporate accountability under international law.
In addition to her academic career, she is an award-winning business journalist, with work published in Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The New Statesman, among others. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of Public Business, a non-profit supporting reporting, research and discussion about the wider impact of business actions.
Prior to coming to Glasgow, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Copenhagen Business School, and earned degrees from the University of Cambridge, Brown University and Columbia University.