I joined the University of Manchester in January 2020 as Professor of Conflict, Peace and Humanitarian Affairs.

Research My research focuses on six themes with a regional specialism in the Middle East:

• The Israel-Palestine conflict.
• The political economy of development, conflict, and peace.
• Contentious politics and the impact of civil society. activism on public perception and government policy.
• The politics of international intervention.
• The politics of aid.
• Decolonial approaches to knowledge production.

Teaching I convene and teach the following modules:

HCRI20022 Rethinking Crisis This is a second year undergraduate module where I introduce students to different concepts and theories which are then critically applied to analyse different types of crises in conflict and humanitarian studies, including international migration patterns, experiences of and responses to climate change, responses to terrorism and counterterrorism, and the Covid-19 pandemic.  

HCRI60170 Research and Evaluation Methods This is a postgraduate module where students learn how to undertake research in preparation for their dissertation. There is a particular focus on research ethics, positionality, and decolonial approaches. It is team-taught with other experts from HCRI.

HCRI60611 The Politics of International Intervention This is a postgraduate module where students explore different concepts and theories in the study of international intervention, and apply them to a variety of case study contexts. There is a particular focus on political economy, feminist, and decolonial approaches. 

HCRI63442 The Political Economy of Conflict and Peace This is a postgraduate module where students explore the role of economic factors during and after conflict, and the challenges for creating a “peace economy”. Particular attention is given to the war economies, the arms industry, and conflict goods - and attempts to regulate these.

My past Before I joined HCRI, I was the Director of the Kenyon Institute, the British Academy-funded international research institute (BIRI) in East Jerusalem, where I lived and worked for eight years. Prior to this I was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Conflict Resolution at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK. And before I became an academic, I was a journalist.

Policy research I have conducted research for the UN and several governments on issues related to conflict and development, and post-conflict peacebuilding, and have published widely on these issues. My research has been funded by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the ESRC, and the Council for British Research in the Levant. 

PhD supervision and postdoctoral research support I am interested in supervising PhDs and providing postdoctoral research support in all areas of Middle East politics and political economy (particularly on Palestine) as well as in the following thematic areas:

Contentious politics, particularly the role of civil society activism in challenging/changing public opinion and government policy

Conflict and development

Post-conflict peacebuilding

The politics of international intervention

Development aid in war-torn societies

I can be contacted at: [email protected]