Mahdi Amin

Mahdi Amin (Bengali: মাহদী আমিন) is a Bangladeshi academic and political adviser. He is currently based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where he is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cambridge.^[1]

On 15 August 2014, Mahdi Amin was named the education and research adviser to the senior vice chair of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party Tarique Rahman.^[2]

Early life and education

Mahdi Amin was born on 30 June 1986 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His father Muhammad Ruhul Amin is an entrepreneur and investor, and mother Salma Amin is a homemaker. Amin's maternal grandfather Abdul Awal was a politician and the founding president of Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Comilla.^[3]

Amin attended Dhanmondi Government Boys School and Dhaka College for his secondary and higher secondary education respectively. Amin attended Middlesex University, earning a bachelor of arts in business administration and graduating first in his program.^[4] He also went to London School of Economics and City University of New York, where he respectively earned a specialisation certificate in political economy of public policy and attended an exchange program.^[5]

In 2010, Amin earned his MPhil in South Asian studies from the University of Cambridge, where he also published a book on India's rise as a research and development hub. His supervisors were Jaideep Prabhu and Sir Christopher Bayly.^[4] The same year he began a PhD at the Judge Business School.

Amin is the founder and president of the University of Cambridge-based think-tank Bangladesh Policy Forum Cambridge with affiliate bodies in United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Finland and Bangladesh.

Consultancy

Amin has worked with a range of international companies as part of his consultancy practice including Alive Products Limited, Audio Analytic, British Telecom Group, Contact Field Marketing, IBM Corporation, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive, London Legacy Development Corporation, Primavera Gallery, Radical Sportscars, Westfield Group, and Wellcome Trust.^[1]

Politics

On 15 August 2014, Mahdi Amin was appointed as the education and research adviser to Tarique Rahman, Senior Vice Chairman of the BNP.^[2] The announcement generated widespread media attention as it was the first time Tarique Rahman appointed an adviser.^[6]

In this role, Amin has focused on research and political opportunities for Bangladeshi youth.^[7]

In July 2013, Bangladesh Policy Forum Cambridge founded and presided over by Amin, published The Political Thought of Tarique Rahman: Empowerment of the Grassroots People. The publication received widespread media attention and triggered subsequent local publications in United States, Canada, Germany, Australia and Finland in Columbia University, University of Toronto, University of Ulm, University of New South Wales and University of Helsinki respectively^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Through the programmes organised by Bangladesh Policy Forum Cambridge, Mahdi Amin has actively engaged with a number of politicians, academics, journalists and bureaucrats, including New York State Senator Jose Peralta; US Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York City, Mayor Vincent Mazzeo of Northfield, Mayor Dr Felix Roque of West New York, New Jersey; Canadian Minister of Research and Innovation Glen Murray; Mitzie Hunter MP; Australian MP Mehreen Faruqi, John Dowd AO QC AO QC; Chrystia Freeland, former editor of Financial Times; David Nicholson and journalist of The Guardian and Daily Telegraph.^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

See also

• Tareq Rahman

References