About me

I have a mixed interdisciplinary background in history, political science, and international relations.

I completed my PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2023. My research was funded through a £101,600 ESRC studentship. My thesis explored British Government security policy during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’.

From 2024 to 2025 I was employed as ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheffield. I was awarded a grant of £130,000 to develop my PhD research: including rewriting my thesis as book, publishing articles, and organising a public exhibition of visual research materials. This exhibition incorporates photographs of ‘peace walls’ built by British military and governmental actors in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, as well as data graphics visualising their effects for spatial mobility. The exhibition has now been viewed by over 33,000 people. You can view a digital version of the exhibition via this link.

I am currently employed as a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. My role involves conducting original archival and interview research on the Northern Ireland peace process. I am also leading on a programme of outreach to schools, which involves creating a new network of teachers and academics to coproduce new materials for teaching the Northern Ireland conflict, as well as writing an ebook on the Northern Ireland peace process to be submitted to the CCEA as part of its ongoing review of Northern Irish history curricula.

Before beginning my PhD, I worked outside academia. I spent two years working for an international development consultancy, serving clients like Amnesty International, WWF, and Malaria No More. I then worked in the UK Parliament for four years, serving as Parliamentary Researcher and Senior Caseworker for two Labour MPs (including a shadow minister and a select committee chair).

My research explores the history of British security policy in Northern Ireland.

I am currently writing a book assessing evolutions in UK security policy during the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’. These include the emergence of the UK’s first-ever counter-terrorism laws (encompassing provisions like stop-and-search, non-jury trial, proscription, and detention without charge), as well as the development of novel peacebuilding schemes leading to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. My book traces these policies’ roots across a longer history of Anglo-Irish politics. I argue that, instead of manifesting a rupture in norms, UK security policy during the Troubles actually represented the continuation of long-term patterns of British politics on Northern Ireland.

My book is based on original archival and interview research in London and Belfast, as well as a quantitative analysis of a new dataset capturing all UK parliamentary debates on Northern Ireland from 1920 to 1984. The book is under contract for publication with Bloomsbury in 2027.

I have published my research in leading journals, including the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, the European Journal of International Security, and Critical Studies on Terrorism. You can access my publications on this website, by clicking this link.

I have experience as a seminar leader, guest lecturer, and student mentor. I have taught a number of modules in the University of Sheffield’s departments of Politics and Journalism. And I have also given guest lectures at the University of Manchester and the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Modules I have taught on include

• International Relations: the World’s Wicked Problems (second-year undergraduate module);

• Communication in Peacebuilding (postgraduate module);

• Contemporary Global Security (postgraduate module);

• British Politics (first-year undergraduate module);

• Politics of the Left: Past, Present and Future (second-year undergraduate module);

• Methods of Political Analysis (second-year undergraduate module).

Before entering academia, I also worked as a teacher in a secondary school in Reading. I taught history and politics. And I led on creation of a community engagement project for the school - involving students being placed at neighbouring primary schools to support learning in maths and English.

I am currently leading on a similar programme of schools outreach at the University of Oxford. This involves creating a network of teachers and academics to collaborate on researching the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, as well as writing an ebook for teaching the Northern Ireland peace process in schools.