Professor Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed is a Karachi-based scholar and academic. His areas of expertise are the Colonial History of India, the Post-colonial State, Politics and Society in Pakistan, and Research Methodology. He has authored and edited thirty books on History, Politics, and Literature and has participated regularly in international and national conferences. Before assuming his present role as Director of the Institute of Historical and Social Research and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Sohail University, he was the Director of the Pakistan Study Centre at the University of Karachi for 18 years.

Throughout his academic career, he has actively participated in civil society rights campaigns, an occupation that earned him the reputation of being a respectable public scholar in the country. In October 2024 he was appointed the General Secretary of the Pakistan Historical Society. (The Pakistan Historical Society was established in 1950 by history researchers to promote and advance research on various aspects of the national history of Pakistan.)