I am a lecturer at POLSIS, University of Birmingham since 2014. In 2016 I was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship with a project on international organisations, conflict and sovereignty. Before, I was a Research Fellow at the LSE and taught at the Universities of Warwick and Manchester, where I completed my PhD in 2011. My research agenda lies at the intersection of IR theory, security and global governance. My expertise is on state recognition and international organisations, especially in the context of conflicts over statehood, unrecognised state, and the European Union. Emanating from this, I am also interested in state theory and sovereignty debates. I am a member a number of professional academic associations and I write regularly for wider audiences, such as for the Guardian and the Conversation.