Assistant Professor in Politics & Political Methodology, King's College London
I am a Lecturer in Politics & Political Methodology (Assistant Professor with tenure) at King's College London. Previously I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Middle East Initiative. I completed my PhD in 2020 in the Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My research interests lie in comparative political economy and political economy of development, with a substantive focus on public service provision, state capacity, distributive politics, accountability, and refugee integration. I study my research questions mostly in the Middle East context by triangulating quasi-experimental statistical designs, novel data sources, and hypotheses and research designs informed by fieldwork and archival research. My papers have been published or are forthcoming in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Studies in Comparative International Development.
My work has received several prizes, including the American Political Science Association's (APSA) Mancur Olson Best Dissertation Prize (Honorable Mention) for Best Dissertation in Political Economy, McGillivray Award for Best Paper in Political Economy (Honorable Mention), Weber Best Conference Paper Award for Best Paper in Religion and Politics, Best Comparative Policy Paper Award, Best Paper Award in MENA Politics, and the Midwest Political Science Association’s Pi Sigma Alpha Award for Best Paper, Kenneth Meier Award for Best Paper in Public Administration or Public Policy, and Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar Award. My research has been supported by the Harvard Data Science Initiative, Program on Governance and Local Development, and MIT Center for International Studies.
In addition to my research, I am deeply interested in diversifying the representation of underrepresented regions, particularly Global South, in political economy research, as well as enhancing the inclusion of scholars from underrepresented backgrounds in our discipline. Beginning in 2024, I will serve as a member of APSA's Committee on the Status of First-Generation Higher Education Scholars in the Profession. I am a Junior Fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS). I serve on the organizing committee of the Politics of the Global South (POGS) working group.
You can find a recent discussion about my research in this podcast and this news article. When I’m not working, I enjoy rediscovering the world with my daughter, and if time allows, watching timeless movies, driving, horse riding, reading about Sufism, and spending quiet times in London's beautiful gardens and parks.