Research

Foreign policy and great power competition

I study how states respond to competition among larger powers, and how domestic political concerns shape those choices. My work examines Chinese soft power and Belt and Road implementation in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Qatar’s relations with the United States and China, and the role of external powers in South Asian politics.

Related work: Delivering Attraction? (China Report, 2026).

Conflict, repression, and regime survival

My research on political conflict examines repression, authoritarian politics, and the conditions under which mass protest produces regime change. I connect cross-national analysis with process tracing, including work on Bangladesh’s July 2024 uprising.

Related work: Regime Collapse without Civil War (Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 2026) and Machiavellian and Hobbesian Foundations of Democratic Decline in Bangladesh (Contemporary South Asia, 2026).

Migration, refugees, and border politics

I also study the international and domestic politics of displacement and borders. This work addresses the Rohingya crisis and Bangladesh–Myanmar relations, India–Bangladesh border and water disputes, and the experiences of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants.

Related work: India–Bangladesh Water Disputes (Discover Global Society, 2025). See also book chapters on the Rohingya crisis.

Master’s thesis

Diversionary Repression in Electoral Autocracies: Crisis Onset, Loss-Domain Conditions, and State Escalation.

University of Southern Mississippi, 2026. Committee: Joe Weinberg (chair), Marek Steedman, and Maggie K. Martin.

Methods

I combine causal inference and panel-data analysis with process tracing, comparative case studies, and interviews. My methodological interests also include survey experiments and computational social science.