I am an economic historian of war and peace. My research traces how states are built — and unbuilt — through the fiscal systems that finance conflict, sustain elites, and shape civic resistance. I am Research Fellow and Sudans Research Director in the Conflict & Civicness Research Group at the London School of Economics, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Economic History.

Africa — particularly Sudan and South Sudan — is the empirical foundation of my work and the vantage point from which I develop a global account of the financial history of conflict and governance. I work from the premise that the Global South is not an exception to be explained, but where the architecture of the contemporary world economy is most clearly seen. Across colonial rule, rebellion, and postcolonial state formation, I trace how revenue systems structure sovereignty, coercion, protection, and political belonging over the long term. While empirically anchored in northeast Africa, my work is explicitly comparative, using African cases to challenge and rethink established narratives of state formation, fiscal capacity, and post-war governance.

My first book, Of Rule Not Revenue: Predation, State-Unbuilding, and Conflict in Sudan and South Sudan, 1821–2023, has been invited for peer review by Cambridge University Press (African Studies Series), following endorsement by the series editorial board in May 2025. The manuscript reconstructs two centuries of fiscal governance from Sudanese, South Sudanese, and British colonial archives, drawing on more than 700 interviews and multi-sited archival research conducted between 2014 and 2024. It develops the concept of predatory peace — the reorganisation rather than resolution of coercive fiscal orders through peace settlements — to rewrite the history of war-making, peacemaking, and rule in one of the world's most protracted conflicts.

My research has appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, with further articles under revise-and-resubmit at Development and Change and other works in progress. I am co-editing a special issue on global fragmentation for the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, and lead research on collaborative and civic-centred methodologies for working with in-country research networks in conflict-affected settings. This methodological work, rooted in the concept of civic fiscal resistance, examines how civic actors contest or redirect extractive governance — and how research itself can be conducted accountably under conditions of war.

My second book project extends this inquiry globally, tracing the financial history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century war and peace through archival and documentary research across multiple sites. It examines how off-budget revenue, shadow finance, and fiscal systems forged in conflict have shaped peace settlements, reconstruction, and political order across the contemporary world economy — from imperial counterinsurgency to Cold War proxy finance and the political economy of modern peace agreements. Building from the historiographic foundations established in my first book, the project develops a global framework for understanding how predatory fiscal orders are reproduced and contested over time.

My academic work is informed by a twenty-year professional background bridging research, policy, and operations. I have held field posts in Sudan with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and in South Sudan with Crown Agents, and have worked with the World Bank, the Rift Valley Institute, and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), among others, on governance, service delivery, and post-conflict transitions. This practitioner experience shapes the historical questions I ask and my commitment to research that speaks to the communities and contexts from which it is drawn.

I have taught MSc and BA courses on African Economic History, Political Economy, and the history of state capacity and public services at the LSE, Durham University, and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. At the LSE I convene EH413: African Economic Development in Historical Perspective and supervise postgraduate research on war economies, fiscal history, and state formation.

My PhD in History (ESRC-funded) and MA in Economic and Social History are from Durham University. I also hold an MA in Governance and Development from the IDS at the University of Sussex, and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.

I am also Editorial Director of Boy Brother Friend, a platform examining contemporary art, fashion, politics, and diasporic worldmaking.