I am an interdisciplinary criminologist with research interests extending across the social sciences. My work makes use of integrated theoretical frameworks and qualitative, ethnographic and online methodologies. I have a strong commitment to cross-sector collaborative research and to moving research findings beyond academia into the policy and practice arenas.

Previous projects have focused on such wide-ranging themes as the methods and motivations of suppliers and consumers of counterfeit and falsified medicines online (European Commission), techniques of financial management among cocaine traffickers and illicit tobacco traders (European Commission), UK-China flows in the counterfeit trade (AHRC/ESRC), and my doctoral research on the changing nature of the British Pakistani honour/shame complex. This research has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals (such as the British Journal of Criminology and European Journal of Criminology), in co-authored books (Fake Meds Online and Fake Goods, Real Money), and in mainstream media (including the BBC, The Guardian, Vice and The Economist).

In 2022/23 I am an ISRF Early Career Research Fellow working on a project titled The Freeport Paradox. This builds on my previous research on global illicit product markets and flows to advance interdisciplinary knowledge of the criminogenic dimensions of special economic zones (SEZs), with an empirical focus on the UK’s new freeports. More info on the project is available here. Alongside this, I will continue my research and writing on various drug markets, as well as publications building on my PhD research that seek to contribute to work on diaspora and the culture-politics-economy nexus.

Substantive areas of expertise include:

• Crime and the global political economy 
• 'Organised crime' and illicit markets
• Drug markets and drug dealing (pharmaceuticals, IPEDs, cocaine)
• Technology-facilitated crime
• Counterfeit markets and intellectual property crime
• Consumer culture
• Contemporary criminological theory
• Anthropological and ethnographic studies of honour and shame (particularly in the Pakistani diaspora)
• International political economy
• Political ideologies
• Qualitative and online research methods (particularly ethnography)

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD candidates in any of the areas above.