He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford where he was also a postdoctoral fellow from 2012 to 2014. He remains the Convenor of the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN) and is the author of Water, Civilization and Power in Sudan: The Political Economy of Military-Islamist State Building (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and, together with Prof Philip Roessler, of Why Comrades Go To War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa's Deadliest Conflict (Hurst, forthcoming)