I am an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Refugee and Migration Studies at the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. I research the politics of migration and refuge in conflict-affected areas. I also look into norm contestation in international relations with focus on the European Union’s external migration policy in the Middle East and North Africa. I am currently carrying out a writing project on how Arab states (re)navigate and (re)fashion the international refugee regime. Over the years, I have widely published on power-sharing in divided societies. Recently, I have taken an interest in exploring the linkages between power sharing, gender and LGBTQ rights in divided societies. My newly published book (co-authored with John Nagle) investigates how queer movements resist and contest Lebanon’s post-war politics of sectarianism (Zed Books, London 2021).

Currently a co-investigator in the multidisciplinary GCRF-funded project “Rights for Time” @rights_4_time network, I look into how we can shift the possibilities for humanitarian protection through research on how time conditions war and displacement. I am also the co-investigator on the SSHRC Insight Development Grant titled Power-Sharing Politics and Refugee Governance: Crafting Asylum Policy in Deeply Divided Societies. With Allison McCulloch (Brandon University), we explore how consociational governments implement policy in the realm of asylum and refugee governance.

In the last years, I have earned several fellowships such as the Jean Monnet postdoctoral fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg.

I am an associate editor of The Journal of Deliberative Democracy. I am also on the editorial boards of Refugee Survey Quarterly and Development Policy Review and on the advisory boards of Comparative Migration Studies and Mediterranean Politics.