I study power—who holds it, how it is built and contested, and the law, capital, and infrastructure that hold it in place. My work runs along two threads: the legal architecture of Chinese state capitalism—its companies, securities, and the cross-border flows of capital—and the critical geopolitics of Global China, from infrastructure megaprojects to the narratives that travel with them.

In the first thread, I examine how the Party-state codes capital, governs state-owned enterprises and companies, and how cross-border securities and finance connect Chinese firms to global markets. In the second, I study how large-scale development and security projects—and their modernization discourses—deepen inequalities and generate new forms of control, but also of resistance. Across both, I combine law, critical geopolitics, development studies, and computational social science.

I’ve worked primarily on China, where I lived for four years, and Pakistan, where I conducted eight months of fieldwork in militarized and conflict-affected areas—studying how Chinese state authority is deployed through infrastructure, discourses, media, and law, and how it adapts to local socio-spatial realities.