I joined Northumbria University in September 2017 as a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. My academic background is interdisciplinary. I hold a BA in Politics, MA in Politics (IPE) and PhD in Sociology. My research and teaching interests integrate approaches from across these disciplines to better understand a wide range of contemporary criminological issues.

Previous research projects have focused on such 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 goods trade (AHRC/ESRC), and my doctoral research on the changing nature of the British Pakistani honour/shame complex. This research has appeared in a number of articles and chapters in leading peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, in the books Fake Meds Online (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Fake Goods, Real Money (Policy Press, 2018), and in mainstream media (including the BBC, The Guardian, Vice and The Economist). 

My current research centres on advancing interdisciplinary and cross-sector knowledge of the political and criminogenic dimensions of freeports and special economic zones (SEZs). This includes a recently completed ISRF Early Career Research Fellowship (2022/23) The Freeport Paradox: Crime, Harm and Reregulation in Special Economic Zones, the findings of which will appear in a monograph of the same name I am currently in the process of writing. Relatedly, I have just finished a piece of consultancy work on global SEZs and environmental crime for the UNODC, the results of which should appear towards the end of 2024. Alongside this, I 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.

I have held several roles in the Department of Social Sciences, including Programme Lead of the MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Acting Director of Learning and Teaching, and Head of Subject in Criminology and Sociology. In 2023 I took over as Director of the Centre for Crime and Policing and became lead of Northumbria’s brand-new ESRC NINE DTP Criminology, Prisons and Policing pathway.

Substantive areas of expertise include:

• Crime and the global political economy 
• 'Organised crime' and illicit markets (drugs, counterfeit goods)
• Drug markets and drug dealing (pharmaceuticals, IPEDs, cocaine)
• Social and environmental harm
• Digital criminology
• Consumer culture
• Contemporary criminological theory
• Anthropological and ethnographic studies of honour and shame (particularly in the Pakistani diaspora)
• International political economy
• Qualitative and online research methods (particularly ethnography)

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