I am a Lecturer in International Development. My research and teaching agenda centers on critical IR and international political sociology, and includes conflict, African politics, state domination, political violence, as well as feminist and decolonial theory, with a geographical specialization on DR Congo (DRC) and Ivory Coast.

Prior to joining the School, I was a senior researcher at the University of Geneva where I am still leading a research programme on the Politics of Urban 'Public' Spaces in the African cities of Abidjan (Ivory Coast) and Kinshasa (DRC). I also held postdoctoral positions at Antwerp and Ghent Universities where I worked on state weakness and formation in urban Africa, peacebuilding, statebuilding, international intervention and security sector reform in the DRC, and the violent politics of urbanization in (post)conflict environments.

African and International Politics

State Theory and Political Violence

International Intervention

Armed Conflict

Resistance

Feminist Theory

Post/Decolonial Theory

Southern Urbanisms

Visual Ethnography and creative (qualitative) methods

Research groups

• International Political Economy & Development

Current grant

• 2022 - 2026: Unruly Spaces: Public Space, Society and Politics in Urban Africa. Swiss National Science Foundation, Ambizione Grant (PZ00P1_201869). Principal investigator, ~ £ 850,000

Past grants

• 2020 – 2021: Lockdown Diaries: Pandemic Stories from the ‘Field'. Rapid-response grant on Covid-19 and Social Sciences, the Social Sciences Research Council ~ £ 4,000
• 2019 – 2021: Localizing International Security Sector Reform. Swiss National Science Foundation, Early Postdoc Mobility Grant (P2GEP1_181547) ~ £ 30,000
• 2019: Researching (Societal) Conflict | Doing Fieldwork in Divisive or Violent Contexts. Swiss National Science Foundation, Scientific Exchanges Grant (IZSEZ0_186585) ~ £18,000
• 2015 – 2017: Metropolitan interactional strategies and state transformation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Swiss National Science Foundation, Doc.CH Grant (P0GEP1_158966)~ £ 155, 000

Please get in touch if you are interested in doing a PhD that relates to my research interests.

I am co-teaching the following courses:

• Issues in IR (POLITIC4010)
• Conflict Analysis (POLITIC5001)