I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. My research is in the fields of critical theory, democratic theory, and the history of German political thought. In particular, I investigate themes related to territory, land, and migration. Recently, I wrote a piece about land grabbing and the problem with territorial sovereignty. I also specialize in the political thought of Hannah Arendt. Check out my pieces on Arendt and Carl Schmitt, and Arendt and Friedrich von Gentz.
My current manuscript, tentatively titledĀ Contested Territory: A Theory of Land and Democracy Beyond Sovereign Bounds, offers a non-sovereign approach to territory and borders. In it, I explore alternative theories of territory that have been suppressed by the dominance of sovereignty. These alternatives belong to a rich tradition of theorizing contested territory that includes anarchists, cosmopolitans, federationists, indigenous theorists, the stateless and mobile, and contrarians of diverse eras and geographies. Self-rule, these thinkers argue, does not require a sovereign grip over land. Land can, and should, be contested. Building on this tradition, I show that it is both possible and desirable to divorce democracy and territorial sovereignty as we understand them today. A theory of democracy built on the shifting sands of contested territory, I find, is specially positioned to respond to the border-defying crises of our age.
See my publications on google scholar. I rarely tweet.