I'm an Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex (UK) where I am currently Co-Head of Media, Journalism and Cultural Studies alongside Dr Tanya Kant.

My books are Refugee Voices: Performativity and the Struggle for Recognition (Routledge) and Digital Mediation, Refugee Recognition and Solidarity (under contract with Amsterdam University Press).

My research interests include the politics of voice and recognition insofar as they relate to asylum and citizenship, the sociology of solidarity, publicness, participation, participatory methodologies, and the boundary work constructed between journalism and humanitarian communication, digitally, or otherwise. In 2026 I am an INDEX Scholar in Lviv, Ukraine studying the relationship between recognition and reconstruction in the context of digital mediation, building on work funded by the International Communication Association (ICA) and British Academy/Leverhulme Trust in Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv.

In 2024 I was a Visiting Fellow at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) in Berlin and Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. Through an AHRC-funded Impact Accelerator account and Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, impact work with partner institutions in the UK including the Imperial War Museum and Migration Museum was published on Reframe as REFUGE: Codifying Refugee Participation in 2025 featuring contributions from institutions across the UK working in participatory practice with those subject to forced displacement.

My work has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals including the International Journal of Cultural Studies, Media War and Conflict, Journalism Studies, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and the International Communication Gazette. I have presented work at ICA, the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) among other international conferences in the field. Alongside Sussex I have taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of the Arts London (UAL), and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Alongside academic work, I have extensive experience of writing for a public audience, having reported from over 19 countries, and written for at least 30 titles over two decades, including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Times, Harvard Nieman Lab, openDemocracy, frieze, Art Review, Paris Review Daily, Prospect, Smithsonian, and the Guardian. I’ve also worked as an investigative researcher for Channel 4 (UK), as a communications consultant and researcher for INGOs including the World Wildlife Fund and Amnesty International, appeared on BBC Radio 4 discussing my work, and worked as a copywriter for organisations including King’s College London, the British Council, and the Berlin nightclub Tresor.

Before working for Sussex, former staff journalism roles included arts correspondent and features writer at the Independent newspaper in London, and acting arts and media correspondent of the Observer newspaper (UK), for which I was nominated for a British Press Award. Prior to that I was an award-winning journalist for trade magazines. My first degree was in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where I edited the university’s student newspaper.

I have a PhD from the Dept of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics where I was supervised by Prof Myria Georgiou and Prof Shani Orgad. During my doctorate, and for several years afterwards, I undertook psychoanalysis multiple times a week via the Institute of Psychoanalysis’s low fee scheme, and retain this interest and influence in my work. I use ethnography, visual and critical discourse analysis.

Writing

Published on platforms including the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer (UK), Prospect, frieze, Paris Review Daily, Smithsonian, New Statesman, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, the Art Newspaper, Calvert Journal, Time Out London, the Village Voice, the Evening Standard, Esquire, Museums Journal, the White Review, Guernica, LA Review of Books, Modern Painters, Dazed and Confused, BOMB, the Millions, Wonderland, Icon and Night and Day (Vintage Books); also worked as an assistant producer for Channel 4 Dispatches.

Consultancy/strategy

Non-profits, arts and media organisations including Amnesty International, WWF, King’s College London, RADA, Tresor Berlin, Southbank Centre, Hearst Corporation