London School of Economics
FRSA · FHEA · Jefferson Fellow · PhD LSE
LSE lecturer, researcher and editor interrogating AI, media, feminist politics, creative economies and sustainability. ESRC PhD · AHRC postdoc · 15+ years as international journalist and editor. Making the invisible visible — from patriarchal algorithms to political economy of media.
Speaker. Policy voice. Public intellectual.
Dr Ruhi Khan, FRSA, FHEA, is a lecturer, researcher and journalist at the London School of Economics whose work moves between the academy, the newsroom and the policy world.
As a lecturer, she has taught across LSE's Department of Media and Communications, Department of Sociology and Department of Gender Studies over the past six years. She is committed to inclusive pedagogy, interdisciplinary curriculum design and the mentorship of the next generation of researchers and communicators. She has also given invited talks at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, SOAS and Royal Holloway, University of London.
As a researcher, she works at the intersection of AI ethics, tech governance, digital feminism and the political economy of media — with sustained focus on postcolonial societies and the Global South. She is currently a Research Officer on the AHRC-funded project Crafting Sustainability and Equitability: Reconstructing Pasts and Futures in the Indian Creative Economy at LSE's Department of Gender Studies, and a faculty affiliate of the LSE Data Science Institute. Her ESRC-funded doctoral research produced an original theoretical contribution — the conceptualisation of "equivocal agency" — the basis of her forthcoming monograph Equivocal Feminism: Media, Technology and the Global Digital Order (Oxford University Press).
As a journalist and editor, she brings over 15 years of international reporting experience across Europe, Asia and North America — covering AI summits, elections, conflicts, COPs and major policy events. As Editor of the LSE Media Blog for six years, she translated complex scholarship into public dialogue, policy insight and global readership engagement. She is co-author of Escaped: Indian Fugitives in London (Penguin Random House, 2021). This book was widely covered in the press in India and across the world. Several of the interviews, podcasts and talks can be found here.
Developing a research programme on cultural labour, sustainability and inequality in India's traditional handicrafts sector. Examines environmental and intersectional dimensions of the creative economy. Co-authoring outputs across international institutions — including chapters for Manchester University Press and policy publications — for an AHRC/UKRI-funded project led by LSE's Department of Gender Studies.
AHRC · UK Research and InnovationPhD at the intersection of coloniality, feminist media studies and technology. Examined algorithmic bias and neoliberal far-right politics in feminist discourses of the Global South. Original theoretical contribution: the conceptualisation of "equivocal agency." Forthcoming as monograph — Oxford University Press.
ESRC · UKRIProject manager and researcher on LSE's cross-national intersectional media analysis of COVID-19 inequality representations. Managed 80+ MSc student researchers across 12 teams over two years. Examined narrative and visual representations of the pandemic across multiple countries.
LSE Media & CommunicationsExamined how the historical spaces charting the 100-year journey of women in Parliament echo in contemporary politico-media discourse. Studied how women MPs challenge Westminster and media framings of their identity and assert voice to deconstruct stereotypical representations.
Gender & Politics
Exclusive, dedicated national newspaper feature on LSE research by Dr Ruhi Khan — one of the first major UK newspaper investigations into patriarchal AI and algorithmic gender bias.
The Telegraph UK · April 2024Invited by BBC News to provide expert commentary on AI governance, India's emerging policy landscape and implications for the Global South.
Views selected as Quote of the Week for expert analysis on media coverage, elite protection and the architecture of power.
Quoted as expert analyst on decolonial feminism and epistemic violence against Afghan women. Research article widely cited internationally.
Invited expert commentary on algorithmic bias and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes in AI-generated advertising content.
Invited to an exclusive working lunch with former PM Rishi Sunak, AI adviser Jade Leung and Google DeepMind's Pushmeet Kohli.
Forthcoming expert commentary invited by The Times UK on the intersection of feminist movements, conflict and media representation.
What media coverage of the Epstein files reveals about how elite networks use institutions — legal, journalistic, and political — to protect themselves from scrutiny. Selected as France 24 Quote of the Week.
The legal and ethical battles over AI-generated likenesses in Indian cinema reveal a much larger struggle over who controls identity, image and voice in the age of generative AI — with implications far beyond entertainment.
The concentration of AI development in a handful of Western companies is not a neutral technological fact — it is a political choice with colonial echoes. What would genuine global co-creation actually look like?
A feminist counter-agenda to patriarchal AI requires structural transformation of who builds these systems, what data they train on, and whose interests they serve.
The most shared article on the LSE Media Blog. Widely syndicated including in The Washington Post. An argument against Western binary framing of Afghan women's liberation — centring Afghan feminist voices on their own terms.
As India's COVID-19 crisis engulfed the country, this piece examined whether mainstream media coverage was illuminating the catastrophe or actively suppressing the scale of suffering — and what that reveals about media power in a majoritarian state.
Austerity and recession do not hit everyone equally — this piece argues that a genuine economic recovery must be built on feminist principles, centring the women and communities most harmed by the convergence of economic and political crisis.
India's democratic narrative often centres on who votes and who wins — but the deeper question is who remains structurally absent from political representation, public discourse and the imagination of the state itself.
An examination of how media coverage of terrorist attacks reduces victims to dramatic props — and why ethical journalism demands we resist the spectacle and centre human dignity instead.
A critical examination of the historical and contemporary appropriation of Black suffering by white feminist and elite narratives — and what decolonial feminism demands instead.
Exploring the deep divisions within Indian feminist movements over capital punishment for rape — and the media's role in turning a complex political debate into a spectacle that obscures structural violence.
Why social media campaigns are insufficient to address the structural misogyny embedded in Westminster culture — and what systemic change for women in Parliament actually requires.
Expert commentary on current events, emerging research and the issues that matter — from AI governance and media power to feminist politics and the Global South. Subscribe on Substack →
Available for media commentary, expert analysis, speaking engagements, academic collaboration and policy consultations — particularly on AI ethics, feminist media studies, tech governance and Global South perspectives.
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