His work concentrates on the political economy of elections. Most of his research focuses on how money and the media shape elections and affect representation and accountability. Methodologically, Fouirnaies has an interest in causal inference and applied econometrics. Most of his projects use natural experiments to uncover causal relations between political and economic variables. Prior to joining Harris, Fouirnaies was a Prize-Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He earned his PhD at the London School of Economics.