I am a critical legal theorist working in the area of human rights law. My work focuses on re-imagining rights through radical critique, and engages the themes of spirituality, vernacular rights cultures, and the politics of race and class within hostile environments. I work with the disciplines of international relations, geography and anthropology to take an interdiscplinary outlook on these themes, and use poststructural, decolonial, diasporic and feminist methodologies.

I am currently working on a book project, Radical Friendship: Human Rights as Ethical Practice, funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2025-2026). The book presents a theory of radical friendship that centres the role of spirituality in developing an ethical praxis of rights. Through empirical case studies that centre abandonment, I draw on concepts from Sikhi to suggest new relational rights that promise liberation and epistemic justice. The book thus intervenes in current debates on radical re-imaginings of rights, decolonising rights and legal futurism. It builds on recent collaborations on the theme of ‘after rights’ – see Special Issue on ‘After Rights? Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics’ in International Journal of Human Rights Law (ed. with Louiza Odysseos; Introduction 2024). I am also working on a project on workers’ rights and racial diversity, with a focus on minoritised workers in the city of Leicester (building on the pilot project 'Pandemic, Race and Rights' (with Ben Rogaly) which was awarded an ESRC Impact Assessment Award in 2022). In 2025, we began the project Continues of Liberalism and Fascism: Rights and Resistance 'After Liberalism' (with Darcy Leigh) funded by the Faculty of Social Sciences Research Fund; the project explores themes of anti-racism, collusion and 'what next' for the university.

My earlier work, most notably my first monograph, made a significant impact in the field of critical approaches to human rights law by applying a governmentality critique to rights (Governing (Through) Rights 2016, Hart Publishing; nominated for SLSA socio-legal book prize 2016). Using the work of Michel Foucualt, I argued that rights are a technology of government and explored the possibilities of counter-conduct through rights. I have published extensively on this theme (eg. in Law & Critique, Social and Legal Studies and Human Rights Law Review) and on alternative legal methodologies, and continue to contribute to work on anti-racist pedagogies, for instance through work with the Connected Sociologies Project. The empirical scope of my work spans the UK, Europe and its empire – I have written on the UK’s Big Society, the 2011 London Riots, the Farmers’ Protests in India, Shamima Begum and citizenship deprivation, and the re-colonising effects of Covid in non-metropolitan England. I write for both academic and public fora including Critical Legal Thinking, Red Pepper Magasine and Discover Society.

I am interested in supervising PhD candidates working on radical critiques of rights, the politics/ ethics of race and class within hostile environments, and protest/ struggle. I have previously worked with scholars engaging Foucauldian, feminist and decolonial approaches to rights (with topics range from housing, transitional justice, healthcare governance and disability rights to transactional sex and the legal aid for asylum claims).

My roles in Sussex Law School are Race Equity Lead and Co-Director of the Law and Resistance Research Group (with Darcy Leigh). I am also a UCU rep for LPS and a member of Sussex Anti-Racism Working Group.