I am a political scientist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. My research focuses on Middle East politics, governance, and political behavior.
My primary research examines how states in the Arab Gulf use leisure, culture, and wellbeing as tools of governance, and how these policies shape political satisfaction, participation, and state-society relations. I also study civic participation and public service delivery in Pakistan and how governance preferences are shaped by migration to the Gulf.
Aross these projects, I use large-scale text analysis, field and survey experiments, and qualitative research to understand how people's everyday experiences with the state shape political behavior.