Biography

I have undertaken my PhD research in political philosophy at the University of Manchester. I develop a centre-right account of political ethics, based on a green libertarian ideal, and derive an account, influenced by Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, that reflects on how citizens and public officials ought to make demands on, or use, public power. At Manchester I have taught on courses in analytic political philosophy, covering political obligation, social justice and political ethics. I plan to defend my PhD in the Autumn 2014.
Between 2004 and 2010 I was a policy adviser for the British Conservative Party, specialising in foreign and security policy, the environment and prisons. I was the party official responsible for the publications ‘Unquiet World’ and ‘Prisons with a Purpose’. I write a regular column on international relations for the Conservative  Home website and have also written for The Guardian and The Economist.
My Max Weber research project addresses the normative origins of moral principles in politics, their relation to the existence of authoritative state institutions, and in particular how they should be acted upon vis-à-vis states that do not themselves possess the domestic rule of law that, I argue, allows international legal instruments to be enforceable.