Research

Research Agenda

My interdisciplinary research examines how energy transitions, fragmented governance regimes, and hybrid threats are reconfiguring the strategic architecture of global order. Situated at the intersection of energy geopolitics, global and regional governance, critical infrastructure resilience, and International Relations theory, my work explores the vulnerability of strategic systems, the evolution of institutional responses, and the changing dynamics of power under conditions of systemic interdependence and geopolitical contestation.

Across these domains, I am particularly interested in how states and regional actors respond to growing uncertainty generated by decarbonisation pressures, supply-chain disruptions, infrastructure insecurity, and the proliferation of non-conventional security threats. My research therefore bridges empirical geopolitical analysis with broader theoretical debates on order transformation, resilience, and governance complexity in contemporary world politics.

1. Energy Transition Geopolitics and Strategic Resource Competition

I find myself drawn to the world through the lens of energy relations. My research in this area examines how the accelerating energy transition is reshaping the geopolitics of interstate competition. Critical minerals, clean energy supply chains, and civilian nuclear programmes have become primary sites of great power rivalry, where technology transfer, financing arrangements, and regulatory frameworks function as instruments of statecraft and vectors of strategic dependency. The geopolitics of infrastructure and chokepoints remains central to this analysis, as physical and institutional vulnerabilities continue to expose the structural relationship between energy and security. The question driving this research is who will govern the energy transition, on whose terms, and with what consequences for the distribution of power in international order.

Particular attention is given to the Indo-Pacific, Northeast Asia, and Africa where energy vulnerability intersects with intensifying great-power rivalry, regional security dilemmas, and contested maritime geographies. My work analyses how states adapt to these shifts through new forms of minilateral coordination, strategic diversification, and infrastructural hedging.

2. Global and Regional Governance

Global and regional governance is being reshaped under conditions of institutional overstretch and geopolitical rivalry. Overlapping institutions, informal coalitions, and minilateral arrangements have become the primary vehicles through which policy coordination is attempted across energy, security, and strategic infrastructure domains. Regime complexity is the analytical lens I bring to this landscape: the proliferation of competing and often contradictory institutional arrangements reflects deeper contests over authority, legitimacy, and rule-making rather than mere coordination failure.

I am particularly interested in how middle powers and regional actors navigate institutional uncertainty through adaptive governance strategies and issue-specific partnerships. The diversity of regional organisations is itself analytically significant here. The rule-based architecture of the EU, the geopolitical weight of the SCO, the normative aspirations of the African Union, and the resource-driven cohesion of the GCC each illuminate how regions construct authority, manage conflict, and position themselves within a fragmenting international order.

3. Critical Infrastructure Resilience

Critical infrastructure has become a primary battleground of contemporary geopolitical competition. Energy grids, maritime chokepoints, logistics corridors, digital systems, and industrial supply chains are now active sites of contestation in which disruption, sabotage, cyber intrusion, and economic coercion generate compounding forms of strategic insecurity. The post-2022 landscape, marked by pipeline sabotage, grid attacks, and the deliberate weaponisation of energy networks, has made the stakes of this research acutely visible.

This area of my work examines the shift from traditional infrastructure protection toward broader questions of resilience, redundancy, and systemic preparedness, including the governance of hybrid threats, cyber-physical risk, and strategic dependencies under conditions of persistent uncertainty.

4. IR Theory

Underlying this empirical work is a sustained engagement with IR theory, particularly debates concerning order transformation, interdependence, securitisation, and the relationship between material systems and political authority. Approaching the field from a post-structuralist sensibility, this research attends to questions that mainstream IR tends to sidestep: how knowledge about international order is produced, whose categories organise our understanding of world politics, and how dominant frameworks naturalise arrangements that are historically contingent and politically contested.

A particular concern is how technological disruption, ecological transition, and hybrid conflict challenge inherited theoretical assumptions about sovereignty, security, and strategic stability.

Research Approach

Methodologically, my work combines geopolitical analysis, qualitative policy research, comparative regional inquiry, and theoretical synthesis. By integrating insights from security studies, governance theory, infrastructure resilience, and strategic political economy, I aim to contribute to a more interdisciplinary understanding of contemporary transformations in world politics.

Regional Focus

While my research is global in conceptual orientation, much of my empirical work concentrates on:

• the Indo-Pacific
• Northeast Asia
• the Commonwealth of Independent States
• Africa