International Political Economy, Global Governance, International Development, Geopolitics, and Global Environmental Politics.

Research Interests

My research contributes to several major debates across International Political Economy (IPE), International Relations, and Human Geography, with published work in world-leading journals spanning International Development, Environmental Politics, Global Governance, Geopolitics, and shifts in World Order. I approach these issues from a heterodox international political economy perspective.

International Development: My research interrogates and characterises major shifts in the field of international development cooperation. This includes the role of South-South Cooperation providers - not least China - and their contributions to global development governance, as well as the so-called 'financialisation of development', the role of private actors and Development Finance Institutions, and shifts in the character and orthodoxy of major institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It also extends to how the rise of right-wing populism and anti-foreign-aid sentiment in the West is reconfiguring established approaches to development cooperation. More broadly, I seek to characterise shifts in the geography, actors, projects, financing, and discourses and norms underpinning International Development in the 21st century.

Environmental Politics: I pursue several lines of inquiry in environmental politics. The first concerns emerging forms of global plastics governance: the role of petrochemical corporations and their associations, their corporate political strategies, and the ways private actors have sought to shape negotiations over a UN Global Plastics Treaty. Relatedly, I examine the pivot of oil and gas firms towards petrochemical production as a hedge against projected declines in oil demand as an energy source. More broadly, my work traces the decline of liberal policy frameworks across global environmental governance, and the impact of geopolitical competition on dominant approaches to environmental problems and ecological degradation.

Global Governance: My research addresses a range of issue areas in global governance. The first concerns the declining salience that major powers - not least the US - ascribe to multilateral cooperation: what I have termed, in co-authored work, a 'post-multilateral' condition. This strand unpacks the various ways major powers sabotage, bypass, divert, and disengage from multilateral institutions, alongside efforts to shore up and revise the existing system. A second examines ostensibly novel forms of cooperation, such as multistakeholder partnerships, and their social function in advancing particular corporate interests. A third, broader line considers the shifting economic orthodoxy within institutions of global economic governance, and how this reflects transformations in the material global economy - not least the rise of state capitalism and geopolitical competition.

Geopolitics: A final, cross-cutting strand concerns the impact of intensifying geopolitical competition on the (super)structures of the global political economy. Here I consider the implications of state-capitalist entities and practices for the assumptions - and indeed the practice - of 'neoliberalism'; how geopolitical realignment reshapes the composition of the so-called 'transnational capitalist class'; and the interlinkages between financial capital, geopolitical imperatives, and militarisation.

I am a Research Associate of the Second Cold War Observatory; a collective of scholars committed to developing contextually and historically situated understandings of how great power rivlary influences and shapes societies, economies, and ecologies globally. I am also Research Fellow and International Development Lead at the Global Policy Institute, University of Durham.

I am Project Co-Lead and Northern Irish Hub Coordinator for the ESRC-funded, £3.75 million 'Evidence Exchange' (EvEx) project; a UK-wide network enabling civil and public servants to learn, connect and collaborate with universities and research organisations.

Before joining QUB in 2021, I was a Research Associate at the Margaret Anstee Centre, University of Cambridge. I hold a PhD from the University of Durham, where my thesis was awarded the Global Policy Institute's Outstanding Thesis Prize.

I am the Programme Director of the MSc in International Political Economy. I will also be convening the following modules in 2026-27:

PAI7111: Approaches to International Political Economy
PAI 7103: Global Development
PAI 7030: Global Governance

PhD Supervision

I am happy to supervise PhD students across the broad fields of International Political Economy and International Relations. My interests span international development, environmental politics, global governance, and the geopolitics of the contemporary world economy, and I welcome proposals that engage any of these areas - whether focused on the actors and institutions reshaping global development (China and financial actors in particular), the political economy of environmental governance and degradation, the contestation of multilateral cooperation, or the implications of intensifying great-power rivalry on the global economy. I am especially keen to hear from students drawn to questions at the intersection of these themes.

I work from a heterodox, critical international political economy perspective, and I am particularly well placed to supervise projects that share that broad orientation. Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact me with a short outline of their proposed research before submitting a formal application, so that we can discuss its aims and how I might best support it.