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Biography
I began my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Nottingham in 2025. I have a first class BA (Hons) degree in International Relations with French from the University of Sussex (2003 - 2007) and an MA distinction in Social and Political Thought, also from the University of Sussex (2009 - 2011). I undertook a year abroad as part of my undergraduate degree, teaching in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France.
Prior to my PhD, I held a number of professional roles which included working in investigative journalism, academic publishing (books) and also within university administration (postgraduate research). In my spare time I currently help a group supporting incarcerated political activists in the U.K. I also support a number of mutual aid projects for several Palestinians based in Gaza. I have been involved in activist movements for more than 20 years.
My current research blends political philosophy, critical criminology and critical theory to reflect on direct action practices and other forms of resistance and protest. I also seek to interrogate the mechanisms by which the state seeks to respond to such movements through law and 'criminal justice', curbing rights to protest, and also through repressive policing, from dawn raids to state surveillance.
My work draws heavily on the work of Walter Benjamin, Georgio Agamben and Michel Foucault as well as recent theorists including Chris Rossdale, Illan rua Wall and Lara Montesinos Coleman. My thinking is deeply informed by the Black Radical Tradition, Marx and Marxist thought as well as anarchist, feminist, abolitionist, and queer theories of liberation.
Research Summary
PhD: Violence, law, and resistance: insurgent humanisms and contemporary justice-seeking direct action practices
I'm interested in researching forms of protest and contestation, specifically direct action practices, and what state responses to this say about the nature of power, sovereignty, resistance, and concepts of criminality and terrorism. I'm especially interested in the current Palestine solidarity movement and climate movements.
I am based in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, and my supervisors are Koshka Duff (Philosophy) and Jason Warr (Sociology and Social Policy).