I have three active programmes of research that speak to political scholarship in Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Political Communication.

Human rights governance: My book, The Strength of Our Commitments (University of Chicago Press, 2024), investigates the strength and effectiveness of national human rights institutions in Europe and beyond. In a world where both human rights legislation and the institutions mandated to implement it increasingly come under pressure, understanding the unique resilience of national human rights institutions is of great value to policymakers in national governments, human rights practitioners in charities and international organisations, and academics. Additionally, I have published widely on different aspects of human rights governance in Europe and globally.

Social inclusion, migration, and the governance of care: My decade-long research programme on social exclusion and migration began with the book, The (In)visibility Complex (Stockholm University Press, 2008) in which I address questions of identity and artistic representations of the migrant experience in Sweden. I recently completed a research project on the governance of care for irregular migrants, funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.

Political communication: My research agenda in Political Communication focuses on the strategic uses of political communication to advance populist political agendas and shape political regimes in both the Global South (Sub-Saharan Africa) and the Global North (USA and UK). I co-edited Populist Communication and Performative Leadership (Palgrave 2023), where together with Gustav Meibauer and Georg Löfflmann we explored the key roles that populist communication can play in advancing foreign policy-making and international diplomacy around the world.