My research interests span political and economic anthropology, with a particular interest in radical projects for social change, such as revolutions and liberation movements. My geographical focus is on southwest Asia and North Africa.

My first book, Sovereignty in Exile: a Saharan liberation movement governs (University of Pennsylvania Press 2016) examines charts experiments in sovereignty and revolutionary state power in the case of the liberation movement from Western Sahara.

Sovereignty in Exile won Honorable mention in the 2017 American Anthropological Association Middle East Section Book Award.

My second book, Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in southern Oman (forthcoming Stanford 2023), asks what survives of revolution after military defeat and repression. The book traces how some former militants of anti-colonial revolution in Dhufar, southern Oman, reproduce revolutionary values in kinship, everyday socializing and unofficial commemoration. The book argues that these afterlives of revolution decolonize narratives of revolution, counterinsurgency and their aftermaths.

Whilst completing my book about legacies of revolution in Oman, I held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship 2019-2020, a Visiting Fellowship at the Prince Alwaleed Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a Derek Brewer Visiting Fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Key themes in my research include: revolution, projects for radical social change, liberation movements, emancipation from enslavement, redistribution and taxation, mobility, forced migration, veterans, the state, citizenship, the Sahara, the Arabian/Persian Gulf and South-west Asia and North Africa more broadly.

I am interested in supervising doctoral research projects that connect with these research interests. 

Currently I supervise the following doctoral researchers:

Mr Nerouz Satik
Ms Laura Shewan

Mr Masood Amer

Previously, I co-supervised Dr Nat Arias and Dr Anahita Hosseini-Lewis.

I am a member of the editorial board at Current Anthropology.