Comparative political scientist studying authoritarian governance, elite bargaining, information control, and political order in fragile and conflict-affected states.
I am an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs. My current UKRI-funded project, The Power of Bargaining: Elections, Rents, and War-to-Peace Transitions, examines how elections, rents, and informal bargaining shape political order during transitions from war to peace.
My research asks how regimes sustain authority when formal institutions are weak. I focus on the governance of uncertainty: how rulers manage opposition, media, and elite competition through ambiguous rules, uneven enforcement, information control, and negotiated coercion.
Research At A Glance
- Fields: comparative politics, authoritarian governance, political economy, media and politics, conflict studies.
- Regional expertise: Afghanistan and conflict-affected political orders, with wider interests in authoritarian and eroding democratic contexts.
- Methods: process tracing, comparative political analysis, fieldwork, and multilingual elite interviews in high-risk environments.
I received my PhD in International Development from SOAS University of London in 2024. My doctoral research examined Afghanistan’s political order from 2001 to 2021, focusing on local power brokers, electoral crises, democratisation, and state-building. During my PhD, I was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Conflict Studies.
My professional path connects academia, journalism, and policy. I have held research positions at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights at Lund University, served as a country expert for international research and policy organisations, and worked as a political correspondent for BBC Monitoring and BBC Persian.
Winner of the 2024 Political Studies Association Walter Bagehot Prize for best dissertation in government and public administration.