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 land and territory (check out my piece on 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 first book, Contested Territory: A Theory of Land and Democracy Beyond Sovereign Bounds (Oxford University Press 2025), presents a critical theory of territorial rights capable of responding to border-defying global challenges such as land theft and monopolization, mass migration, and environmental crisis. In an effort to broaden our territorial imagination, Contested Territory resuscitates subversive, anti-sovereigntist proposals in the history of political thought that theorize land as a shared and contested foundation for overlapping political projects. Theorists of contested territory—anarchists, exiles, federationists, cosmopolitans, indigenous theorists, and so on—do not view the absence of sovereignty over land as a problem, and find democratic potential in overlapping rule. Building on such alternatives, this book charts normative foundations for a cosmopolitan, democratic theory of territory and land politics. Through a critical engagement with the thought of Hannah Arendt, it grounds democratic land governance in the land-based, non-sovereign practices of world-building. Contested Territory concludes that is both possible and desirable to decouple democracy and territorial sovereignty, and that by doing so we can better respond to the border-defying crises of our age.
See my publications on google scholar. I rarely tweet.