I am a first-year student studying for the MPhil in International Relations and a member of Brasenose College. My research primarily focuses on disobedience among Sub-Saharan African political elites in regard to Structural Adjustment Programmes in the 1980s, investigating the 'poverty of imagination' within International Financial Institutions in that period and the factors that both constrained and facilitated African strategies of avoidance. More broadly, I am interested in the agency of 'Global South' elites during the Cold War period and their position in International Political Economy, as well as authoritarian survival strategies.
Before taking up the MPhil, I completed a BA in History and Politics, also at Brasenose College, and graduated with a First-Class result in 2024. I was elected as an Exhibitioner in both academic years 2022/23 and 2023/24 and served as the Vice-President of the college's history society in 2022/23. My undergraduate politics dissertation was titled "White Knights and Red Devils: Accounting for Cross-National Variations in Football Ultras' Politicised Behaviour in North Africa in the 21st Century" which used a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to compare and explain football Ultra behaviour in Tunisia and Egypt before, during, and after the Arab Spring in 2011. I retain a personal interest in sport under authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes, both as a tool of legitimation and a space for protest and was in contact with leading scholars, such as James Dorsey, in that field during my research. Outside of my studies, I am a goalkeeper in the Oxford University Blues football team, having achieved a Half-Blue award as an undergraduate.
Research Interests
- Sub-Saharan African Politics in the 20th Century
- Policy-making Processes in International Financial Institutions
- International Political Economy
- International Relations During The Cold War
- Authoritarianism and Regime Stability
- The Role of Sport in non-Democratic Regimes
