Profile

My research asks how authoritarian rule and violent conflict reshape political identities, and how these transformations endure beyond the political orders that produced them. Syria is the principal empirical site of this research, through which I examine the intersections of political violence, masculinity, sectarianism, nationalism and armed mobilisation in the Middle East.

My research is grounded in extensive primary fieldwork that is difficult to access through conventional methods. Since 2022, I have conducted more than 200 hours of interviews with fighters and central commanders across Syrian armed groups, alongside directing over 10,000 surveys inside Syria as part of a wider comparative dataset exceeding 20,000 respondents. This research examines how experiences of grievance, humiliation, moral injury, belonging and combat shape political subjectivities and violent behaviour, and how these dynamics are being reconfigured as former armed actors transition from fighters to military, political and administrative roles in post-Assad Syria.

My publications reflect this wider intellectual trajectory. Romanticizing Masculinity in Baathist Syria: Ideology, Identity and Gender (Manchester University Press, 2024) examines masculinity as a mechanism through which authoritarian ideology and national belonging were constituted. My forthcoming Who Owns ‘Sunnism’? Weaponizing Sect in the Syrian Civil War (I.B. Tauris, 2026) turns to sectarianism, religious authority and contested Sunni identity. My current research focuses on combatant mobilisation, military integration, post-conflict masculinities and the transformation of armed groups from insurgent actors into agents of state-building.

Beyond academic publication, my research directly informs diplomacy, mediation and policy engagement. I contribute to Track 1.5 dialogue and high-level discussions on Syria’s political and security transition, particularly armed-group integration, security-sector reform, reconciliation and state legitimacy. My research has informed engagements with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the European External Action Service, the United Nations and European governments, as well as international policy organisations.

I also contribute extensively to public debate, translating academic research for wider audiences through more than seventy media engagements across fourteen countries and in four languages. These include contributions to BBC, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs and The National.