About

Village landscape on the China–Myanmar border near Kokang — Photograph taken by the author on the China–Myanmar border, Nansan Township, Zhenkang County, 2018.

I work as a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Manchester and as a research associate at the Development Studies Department at SOAS University of London. I am also the Thematic Editor (International Relations) for Asian Studies Review.

Currently, I lead a three-year project (Hallsworth Fellowship) called Borderland Capitalism, the Chinese-run online scam industry in Southeast Asia.

Trained in political science, I adopt a historically grounded approach that integrates archival research with fieldwork-based oral histories to examine the persistence of conflict and illicit economies in Southeast Asia’s contested borderlands, with a particular focus on Myanmar.

I obtained my MSc in Development Studies at LSE (2019) and later a PhD in International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London (2024). Later I worked with Jonathan Goodhand's project on The centrality of the margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development.

My research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Contemporary Asia, China Perspectives,Asian Studies Review and Current History. I am currently developing two book projects: one on borderland statecraft and armed politics, and another on the politics of the digital illicit economy.