Originally from Australia, I am a legal and political theorist working within the traditions of critical theory and the history of political thought. 

My current research looks at historical and contemporary issues in relation to the radical right and 'populism'. I am particularly interested in how parts of the radical right appropriate, mimic and repurpose what might be considered as normally 'left-wing' critiques of capitalism, globalisation, bureaucracy and identity politics. I am interested also in the politics of 'deception' and 'hope' and how discourses of deception and hope play a role in forms of radical right political mobilisation. 

Recently, I have written on intersections between the French New Right and American Paleoconservatives and the production of right-wing social theory which underpins contemporary forms of right-wing populism. I have also written on the relationship between law and conspiracy theory, particularly in relation to so-called 'sovereign citizens', 'freemen on the land' and pseudolaw. I have a few pieces also on the way in which contemporary liberal approaches to 'populism' fundamentally misunderstand the phenomenon and themselves in the process. 

My previous work has focussed upon ethical questions in relation to conflict, war and violence and upon issues of global justice, property and capital accumulation and global constitutionalism. 

In The Other's War: Recognition and the Violence of Ethics (Birkbeck Law Press/Routledge, 2009), I present a critical revision of the Western intellectual tradition's understanding of the ethics of war and terrorism. In this I propose the idea of 'recognising the ethics of the others war' as key normative challenge of contemporary legal and political orders. The book was awarded the 2010 International Studies Association, International Ethics Book Prize.

In Global Justice and Social Conflict: The Foundations of Liberal Order and International Law (Routledge, 2019), I develop a historical and theoretical reappraisal of the ideas and conceptual frameworks that underpin and sustain the global liberal order, international law and neoliberal rationality. I argue that any account of global justice must by definition be an account of social conflict and I show the extent to which contemporary global relations are constituted by struggles over property, capitalist accumulation, equality and dignity. I argue that the only viable future for modern international law resides in the creation of an egalitarian and democratic global constitutional order. 

Generally I am happy to supervise PhD students in legal and political theory, critical international legal theory, and social and political thought.