I am a political theorist working on natural law, political liberalism, religious freedom, and the relationship between Islamic and Western political thought. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. I am also currently under contract with Polity to co-author (with João Pinheiro da Silva) a book provisionally entitled Postliberalism: The Politics of Virtue, Exile, or Enmity.

I completed my DPhil in Political Theory at the University of Oxford, where my thesis examined the postliberal critique of liberalism and the claim that liberal societies tend to become coercively progressive. My research asks how political communities can sustain substantive moral commitments while preserving liberty, pluralism, and principled limits on coercion.

Natural Law and Political Authority

A central theme of my work is the relationship between human flourishing and legitimate political authority.

Drawing on the natural law tradition and contemporary analytic political philosophy, I examine when governments may promote substantive moral goods; when coercion becomes objectionably paternalistic; and when, if ever, public policy should remain neutral between competing conceptions of human flourishing.

My current research includes work on the limits of legal paternalism, the distinction between the ends and means of public policy, and the place of religion within accounts of human agency and political legitimacy.

Liberalism and Postliberalism

My doctoral research critically evaluated the postliberal argument that liberalism culminates in the coercive imposition of progressive views of human flourishing, particularly in the domains of family, sexuality, and gender.

I am particularly interested in whether liberalism has defensible internal resources for resisting this development, and whether conservative political thought can preserve the goods of liberalism—such as freedom of religion, expression, and association—without reproducing liberalism’s possible tendency to dissolve into coercive progressivism.

Islam, Natural Law, and the West

A further strand of my research considers relations between Islamic and Western political thought.

I am interested in whether and how Islamic conceptions of natural law, liberty, and the purposes of government can support constitutionalism, religious freedom, and civil liberties. This work explores both the resources within the Islamic intellectual tradition and the ways in which modern Muslim thinkers have relocated or reconceptualised religious authority.

More broadly, I argue that the relationship between Islam and liberal constitutionalism should be approached as a substantive philosophical question rather than merely as a problem of accommodation or identity. My work as Head of Domestic Policy at the UK think tank Pickthall House brings these philosophical questions into direct engagement with contemporary public policy.

Conservatism

My work also engages the modern conservative intellectual tradition, especially natural law theory, Burkean conservatism, and American fusionism.

I am particularly interested in how conservatism can reconcile commitments to religion, family, nation, and inherited institutions with personal liberty, and whether conservatism might provide more robust intellectual resources than liberalism for conceptualising the place of religious minorities. I have written on conservative thinkers including Robert P. George and Sir Roger Scruton and convened an Oxford reading group on conservative political thought. 

My broader aim is to develop a form of morally substantive but non-authoritarian conservatism capable of avoiding the excesses both of contemporary progressivism and the anti-liberal reactions it has provoked.

Public Policy and Commentary

Alongside my academic work, I am Head of Domestic Policy at Pickthall House, a British think tank concerned with relations between the United Kingdom and Muslim communities both within Britain and abroad.

My policy work focuses on religious freedom, social cohesion, constitutionalism, and the place of Islam within public life. My commentary has appeared in First Things, Renovatio, Public Discourse, Academic Questions, Law & Liberty, and elsewhere. I have also appeared regularly on GB News.