Previous posts include a Lectureship at the University of Edinburgh and a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His research focuses on history and politics ‘from below’ in the modern Middle East and North Africa. He has worked on popular protest, low-skilled labour migration, survivalist enterprise, and labour, with special reference to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and increasingly to the GCC countries and North Africa. His most recent book is Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is currently working on transnational advocacy and activism with reference to migrant labour rights in the GCC, Palestinian rights in Israel/Palestine, and citizenship rights in Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia.