PhD International Relations, University of Kent (2019) 

MA International Relations, University of Kent (2014) 

BA (Hons) International Relations and History, University of Portsmouth (2013) 

American foreign policy; remote warfare; autonomous weapon systems; the Global War on Terror. 

My research focuses on American foreign policy and international security. I am particularly interested in the study of remote warfare, autonomous weapon systems, great power competition, and the evolution of American counterterrorism policy after 9/11.  

My research has made a major contribution to the study and conceptualisation of remote warfare. Published with the journal Defence Studies in 2021, I co-edited the Remote Warfare and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century special issue – the first on this concept– with Dr Rubrick Biegon and Dr Vladmir Rauta. I have also published articles on the remoteness of remote warfare, the role of remote warfare in the retooling of American primacy following the Iraq War, and whether remote warfare is a buzzword. Other articles have examined the change and continuity in Donald Trump’s counterterrorism policy as well as the neoconservative legacy on the ‘forever war’.

Another strand of my research examines the US’ approach to the development and possible regulation of autonomous weapon systems. Alongside Dr Ingvild Bode, I have co-authored major policy reports on the use of autonomy in air defence systems and loitering munitions. Bringing the growing study of AI narratives into greater dialogue with the International Relations literature on popular culture and world politics, we have also unpacked the repository of different stories told about intelligent machines in the first two Terminator films and examined their relationship to the global regulatory debates on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems.

Beginning in November 2022, I will be working on a new three-year Leverhulme funded project titled Great Power Competition and Remote Warfare: Change or Continuity in Practice? The Trump administration is argued to have fundamentally altered the direction of American foreign policy through its focus on great power competition with "revisionist powers", most notably China. Nevertheless, we know comparatively little about how this key aspect of Trump’s presidential legacy has impacted the dynamics associated with change and continuity in contemporary American foreign policy. Whilst today's era of Sino-American strategic competition has been widely compared with the Cold War, the relationship between great power competition and the Global War on Terror as organising practices of American foreign policy has received less attention. This study makes a timely contribution toward International Relations scholarship by examining the relationship between the Trump administration’s approach toward great power competition and American foreign policy practices during the George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations. It has a particular focus on examining the relationship between great power competition, the Global War on Terror, and technologies associated with the concept of “remote warfare”, most notably artificial intelligence.

My doctoral dissertation examined the continuity in the means and goals of the Obama administration’s military response to al-Qaeda’s regional affiliates in Africa and the Middle East. I was awarded my PhD without corrections from the University of Kent in January 2019. I have previously held positions at multiple institutions including as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded AUTONORMS project based at the University of Southern Denmark.  

During the 2023/2024 academic year, I will be teaching the following two MSc modules: (1) US Foreign Policy in an era of Great Power Competition (PR5908) and (2) International Policy Practice (PR5961).