I currently serve as Head of the School of Social Sciences (2023-) and Vice President of Academic Board (2024-).

My research seeks to understand how we can adapt political institutions designed in the previous century to meet the challenges of our age by exploring the intersections between comparative politics, public policy, and international relations scholarship. I draw inspiration from communities who have constructed institutional forms to manage the dilemmas inherent to coloniality and climate change. I seek to challenge simplistic narratives about the form, function and desirability of supposedly best practice political models and their relationship to ideas about progress. I do so by employing an interpretive approach that foregrounds actors and their intersubjective beliefs.

I am the author of 8 books and two edited collections. My most recent book is: Sustaining Development in Small Islands (2024, Cambridge University Press Elements) with Matt Bishop, Rachid Bouhia, George Carter, Courtney Lindsay, Michelle Scobie and Emily Wilkinson. My previous books include: Statehood à la Carte in the Caribbean and the Pacific: Secession, Regionalism, and Postcolonial Politics (2023, Oxford University Press); International Organisations and Small States (2021, Bristol University Press) with Pat Weller and Yi-Chong Xu; Institutional Memory as Storytelling (2020, Cambridge University Press Elements) with Dennis Grube, Heather Lovell and Rodney Scott; The Art and Craft of Comparison (2019, Cambridge University Press) with John Boswell and Rod Rhodes; Democracy in Small States (2018, Oxford University Press) with Wouter Veenendaal; Australia’s Foreign Aid Dilemma (2017, Routledge); and Being Political: Leadership and Democracy in the Pacific Islands (2015, University of Hawaii Press). The two edited volumes are: with Brij V. Lal Political Life Writing in the Pacific: Reflections on Practice (2015, Australian National University Press) and with Doug Munro Bearing Witness: Essays in Honour of Brij V. Lal (2017, Australian National University Press). 

I have published more than 90 journal articles, book chapters and commentaries since 2012, including in World Development, Global Environmental Change; Comparative Political Studies, Public Administration Review, Journal of European Public Policy, European Journal of Political Research, Governance, Global Envionrmental Politics, Environmental Politics, Public Administration and Political Studies. 

I hold or have held research grants from the ESRC; British Academy; Australian Research Council; the Australian and New Zealand School of Government; and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

I hold honorary appointments at the University of Malta and Griffith University, Australia. I serve as Co-Director of the Resiliant and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI); editor of the University of Hawaii Press Topics in the Contemporary Pacific book series; and associate editor of the Australian Journal of Public Administration.  

I completed my PhD at The Australian National University in 2012. After an 18-month Postdoctoral Fellowship at the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program I took up a Research Fellowship at Griffith University on a joint appointment with the Centre for Governance and Public Policy and the Griffith Asia Institute. In 2016 I moved to the University of Southampton, UK, where I was promoted to Professor and Deputy Head (Research) of the School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences. I joined the faculty at Monash in 2023 as the Head of the School of Social Sciences and was elected Vice President of Academic Board in 2024.