Asma Mhalla

Asma Mhalla
Education	EHESS
Occupation(s)	political scientist, author

Asma Mhalla is a French academic, political scientist and essayist. She holds a PhD in political science from EHESS. Mhalla is an associate researcher with the Laboratory of political anthropology, a joint project of CNRS and EHESS. She is a lecturer at Sciences Po and École Polytechnique.

Education and career

She was awarded a scholarship to study in France in the prestigious Classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles of the parisian establishment Janson de Sailly.

She was subsequently admitted to ESCP Business School. She did not take any interest in the business studies at ESCP. After graduation, Mhalla worked in investment banking at BNP Paribas and consulting, an experience that she praised for structuring her approach to work. She left her job in 2016 due to a stay in hospital and illness. During that time Mhalla took an interest in political theory and technosurveillance issues reading the work of Bernard Harcourt.

Following a publication of her first article on tech policy in the Huffington Post, Harcourt and Mhalla established a collaboration.

Tech policy and Big Tech Governance

Mhalla is a political scientist and tech policy expert. Her writing deals with democratic and geopolitical challenges of our times, such as big tech governance, tech sovereignty and disinformation.

She was called upon to analyze tech issues ranging from disinformation to the political power of the Big Tech, political stakes of generative AI and the social media democratic challenges.

In February 2024, Mhalla published an essay Technopolitique. Mhalla argued in her book that technology is ultimately structuring new forms of power and our relationship to democracy.

She warned against the political power wielded by Big Tech, which seems illegitimate in the absence of a democratic mandate.