I am a Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Studies. Prior to joining HCRI in 2023, I was an Associate Professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), and I have also held research and teaching positions at the Geneva Graduate Institute, UCL, the University of Oxford, and Oxford Brookes University.

I study international responses to conflict, violence, and migration. I am especially interested in how theoretical approaches from IR can enhance understanding of humanitarian policy and practice, and how such policy and practice can in turn shed light on theoretical questions from IR.

As well as several journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, I am the author of two books: Protecting Civilians in War: The ICRC, UNHCR, and their Limitations in Internal Armed Conflicts (OUP 2016) and The Politics and Everyday Practice of International Humanitarianism (OUP 2023).

I have three principal—and often overlapping—lines of research:

• the protection of civilians in conflict and violence
• the politics, principles, and practice of international humanitarianism
• the governance of migration, refugees, and displacement

Across all three, I combine top-down approaches from International Relations and International Law with more bottom-up methods to understand how inter-governmental and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations work on the ground, and how international humanitarian law and international refugee law function in practice to shape outcomes for the victims of conflict and violence. I have carried out fieldwork in Colombia, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I am currently doing research on Mexico.