My work explores how power is built, held, and challenged by both state and non-state actors—from governments and militaries to corporations, media platforms, and social media users. I study how infrastructure, spatial arrangements, and geopolitical discourses are used to shape what people can do, where they move, and what they accept as "truths".

Combining critical geopolitics, law, development studies, and computational social science, I examine how large-scale development and security projects and their modernization discourses deepen inequalities and generate new forms of control—but also of resistance.

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