Research

My work explores how expert knowledge and representation shape global governance. A central thread across my projects is the idea that the people inside international organisations—staff members, experts, consultants, and leaders—play a decisive role in how global rules are designed and implemented. In my research, I try to understand how their professional backgrounds, expertise, and identities shape which problems are prioritised, which solutions are advanced, and whose interests are ultimately served. In this sense, micro-level expertise and representation often translate into macro-level inequalities in the global political economy.

For much of its history, international relations has focused on states, systems, and institutions as the main actors in world politics. This perspective has generated important insights, but it has also tended to obscure the fact that every institutional decision is made by individuals. From high-profile leaders who redirect foreign policy to the civil servants drafting loan conditions at the World Bank, individual choices cumulatively chart the course of international cooperation. My research seeks to bring those individuals into focus.

One strand of this agenda investigates international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. I study how inequalities in staff representation—including gender imbalances and the underrepresentation of professionals from the Global South—shape organisational behaviour, from procurement decisions, over gender mainstreaming to project implementation. This work builds on the comprehensive biographical dataset I developed during my PhD, which captures the professional trajectories of thousands of IO staff and enables systematic analysis of how representation within institutions affects outcomes.

Another strand focuses on global health, where international organisations face immense challenges in coordinating responses to crises and long-term threats. My research examines how the World Health Organization governs through expert guidance, and how the composition of delegations influences which issues receive attention and which remain neglected. I am currently pursuing a project on antimicrobial resistance , an overlooked but urgent governance challenge with far-reaching consequences for global health.

Methodologically, I combine theory-driven inquiry with quantitative approaches that move beyond country-level analysis. By using biographical datasets alongside survey and field experiments, I examine how individuals navigate the institutional environments they inhabit, and how their decisions reverberate outward into broader political and economic outcomes.

Overall, my research demonstrates how the authority and representation of individuals both enable global institutions to function and reproduce patterns of inequality in the international system.