M Abul Kalam Azad has been appointed as the acting editor of TIMES of Bangladesh. He formally assumed this responsibility on Thursday. Prior to this, he had been serving as Editor, Special Affairs.
In his long 29-year journalism career, Azad has held various responsible positions in the country’s top English-language media outlets alongside regular reporting.
In addition to journalism, he has published several research articles. His notable book, “Women and Terrorism in Bangladesh,” was published in 2024 from Berlin, Germany. This is the first book on female militants in Bangladesh.
A graduate of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Dhaka, Azad served as the elected president of the Dhaka University Journalists’ Association.
He began his professional career in 1997 as the Dhaka University correspondent for the news agency UNB. In 1999, he joined The Daily Star. He has also worked for New Age, Dhaka Tribune, and the German media outlet Deutsche Welle.
A journalist and researcher, Azad has written and published widely on politics, corruption, terrorism and extremism, and human rights abuses for both Bangladeshi and International news outlets.
He also studied violent extremism at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University under a fellowship programme. Azad is the author of “Media Landscapes: Bangladesh,” published by the European Journalism Centre (EJC) in 2018.
As a key researcher, he has assisted the Media Reform Commission to compile a comprehensive report for the Interim Government. He also wrote the 2025 annual report for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), explaining the freedom landscape in Bangladesh.
He is a 2023 Journalist-in-Residence fellow of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECMPF).
