Research

​I am currently a PI (primary investigator) on a three-year MSCA fellowship looking at diaspora states and variegated diaspora statecraft, with two Australia Research Council grants currently under review--one on global talent wars and another on foreign interference and diaspora geopolitics. 

I was previously co-investigator on two large grants based at the LSE – the ESRC-funded Centre for Public Authority and International Development (CPAID) (since 2019 £6 million, renewed for 2021-2024) and the FCDO-funded Conflict Research Programme (CRP) (since 2019 £3.5 million, renewed for 2021-2025). These were two of the largest comparative research programmes globally on the political economy and study of crisis-affected states. These grants sought to investigate why there is an increasing number of 'failed states' globally, why foreign interventions have failed to generate radical transformation, and why these states often fail in developing into advanced economies and democracies. 

My forthcoming book with OUP, Diaspora Inc., builds a theory of 'diaspora states' based on original, in-depth case study research on Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland. It is the first book to identify this phenomenon of 'diaspora states' whereby diaspora may capture homeland affairs in ways that fundamentally alters the nature of the state and may negatively affect the transition towards fiscal-bureaucratic states with implications for global security through its extraterritorial practices. It develops a methodological and theoretical framework for analysing globally how 'diaspora states' may emerge and disappear and the politics of variegated diaspora statecraft. Diaspora states do not represent some cosmopolitan ideal.