My research asks: how do political transitions unfold — and who shapes them — when power, media, and democracy collide?
I examine how elite cooperation, state-building projects, and external interventions interact to produce (or undermine) local governance and legitimacy in conflict-affected regions. Methodologically, I combine process tracing and comparative political analysis with extensive elite interviewing — including over 51 in-depth interviews conducted in high-risk settings.
Current Project
As an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Durham University, I lead a funded project:
The Power of Bargaining: Elections, Rents, and War-to-Peace Transitions
This project investigates how rent distribution and electoral competition interact during war-to-peace transitions, drawing on original fieldwork and comparative cases. It bridges insights from political economy, conflict studies, and media analysis to ask why some transitions consolidate peace while others relapse into violence.
Doctoral Research
My PhD examined post-intervention Afghanistan (2001–2021), focusing on the dynamics of electoral politics, local power brokers, and the limits of externally-sponsored democratisation. I argued that the collapse of Afghanistan’s republic was not simply a military failure but a political one — rooted in the structural tensions between internationally-designed institutions and local bargaining realities.