About me

I study how political order is made, maintained and unmade when formal institutions are weak.

I am a UKRI-ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs. My current 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 work focuses on the governance of uncertainty: how regimes manage opposition, media and elite competition through ambiguous rules, uneven enforcement, information control and negotiated coercion. I work primarily on Afghanistan, with wider interests in authoritarian and eroding democratic contexts.

At a glance

• Fields: comparative politics, authoritarian governance, political economy, media and politics, conflict studies.
• Methods: process tracing, comparative analysis and multilingual elite interviewing in high-risk environments.
• Background: PhD in International Development (SOAS, 2024); previously BBC World Service and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at Lund University — full CV.