Mariah Faridah Muli was the winner of the 2025-26 Routledge/ Round Table Commonwealth Studentship Award for a PhD student registered at a member university of the ACU outside the UK .

Faridah is a PhD candidate and HFG Africa Fellow attached to the Department of Diplomacy and International Studies at University of Nairobi-Kenya. She lectures at the University of Nairobi and serves as a Research and Policy Fellow at the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies. She has extensive experience in international relations and security issues and has contributed to regional policy dialogues, including the EU–IGAD Taskforce on the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. She also writes opinion pieces for The Daily Nation newspaper in Kenya.

Faridah’s PhD research focuses on Digital Technologies in Counterterrorism and Violent Extremism Prevention in the Horn of Africa in the context of how states like the U.S. are assisting in combating terrorism through strategic partnership. She examines how digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital surveillance, and online monitoring tools are reshaping counterterrorism and their implications on governance and civil liberties.

She was a Visiting PhD Fellow at Sciences Po University Paris-France (Spring 2026) and is currently a Digital Humanism Fellow at Institute of Human Science (IWM) in Vienna, Austria.

In this podcast , Professor Tim Stevens of Kings College, London, is in conversation with Faridah on her work – Podcast-Digital Counterterrorism Dragnet in Kenya and Nigeria Democratic Governance.mp4 – Google Drive

Find out more about the Routledge/ Round Table Studentship Awards