Research


My interests include critical human rights, race and empire, Jewish international studies, queer studies, and postcolonial Europe. I am currently pursuing three interconnected projects:

​

 

1) A book manuscript, entitled "International Politics after Reparation: German Colonialism, the Shoah, and the Promise of Justice"

This book draws on many years of ethnographic fieldwork with reparatory justice movements, legal advocates, and policy-makers in Germany, the United States, and Namibia concerning the legacy of the Herero and Nama genocide. It contends that a genuinely reparatory politics must reach beyond the model of Holocaust reparations and the late liberal promise of state recognition of genocide. By weaving together historical international relations, post-colonial studies, and ethnography, the manuscript shows the importance of building a politics after reparation.

​

2) A collaborative project with Dr Darcy Leigh entitled "Critical Jewish International Studies".

This project critiques the way the figure of the “suffering Jew” is mobilised, both materially and symbolically, to stabilise liberal international order.We argue that the post-1945 landscape of international law and the post-imperial state system is built around a narrative of Jewish redemption by Western (Christian) liberalism. The importance of this narrative to international politics is very often ignored in critical thought in International Relations. Our aim is to establish and build a field of Critical Jewish International Studies to remedy this.

​

3) The study of the relationship between antisemitism, colonial racism, and Christian Europe. 

I am particularly interested in the ongoing connections between antisemitism and political Zionism in the West. I  have just written an article on the symbiotic relationship between German colonial thought and political Zionism. More generally, I am collaborating on producing a public syllabus on Zionism, especially the history of Christian Zionism in Britain, with Makan UK.

​