Nazmul Ahasan is a journalist and researcher with years of experience in investigative journalism, long-form narrative and opinion writing, and social science research. He currently works with the Investigative Reporting Program at University of California, Berkeley. He is part of a cohort of reporters and editors helping create a database of police use-of-force incidents across California.

At the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Ahasan pursues a Master of Journalism supported by the Berkeley Journalism Fellowship and Subir Chowdhury Fellowship on Quality of Life in Bangladesh. He covered the city government for the Richmond Confidential, a hyperlocal news website operated by the graduate school.

More recently, he has reported for San Francisco Chronicle and Foreign Policy.

Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area from Bangladesh, he covered the Rohingya refugee crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Coronavirus vaccination drives in his home country. As an independent journalist, his reportage, op-eds, or reporting contribution appeared in major news publications such as The Telegraph, The Economist, The Columbia Journalism Review, Haaretz, Devex, The Hindu, Scroll, FirstPost, and The Wire.

In his previous life, Ahasan worked at The Daily Star, Bangladesh’s largest English-language newspaper, where his weekly column chronicled the country’s gradual descent into authoritarianism. It inquired into unfair and unfree elections, soaring inequality, and human rights violations such as extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances.

He also curated and edited readers’ comments for The Daily Star’s ‘Letter to the Editor’ section. For the paper’s weekly magazine, Star Weekend, Ahasan reported on the environment and marginalized communities such as slum dwellers, Dalit, and Rohingya people.

He co-authored a chapter on Bangladesh’s politics in ‘Masks of Authoritarianism: Hegemony, Power and Public Life in Bangladesh’ published by Palgrave Macmillan. He has also jointly written a country case study on Bangladesh’s academic freedom. Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), a leading global think tank in Berlin, Germany, will publish the study.

As a commentator on politics in Bangladesh, he has been interviewed by Al Jazeera, TRT World, BBC Radio Newshour, Newslaundry, and The Wire, among others.