Research Areas

“Running Hunter with a Rifle,” Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan (1935)

Surveillance Games: Financial Crime and the Politics of Global Detection (Book Project)

This book project investigates the hidden global architectures of financial surveillance. Drawing on archival sources and more than 100 interviews in six countries, it traces how political battles — Surveillance Games — shape (and often hinder) the detection of money laundering, market manipulation, and international smuggling.

Related Publications / Updates

Licensed Detection Agents: The Case for Financial Crime Bounty Hunters (Berkeley Business Law Journal, Forthcoming 2026) Supranational detectives? Transnational market abuse and the politics of surveillance delegation (Journal of European Public Policy, 2022) Market Structure and Disempowering Regulatory Intermediaries (Regulation & Governance, 2021)

Chasing the Smugglers: The Role of Private Firms in Export Control Enforcement

Export controls — restrictions on goods and technology leaving a country — are a core tool of economic statecraft. But they are not self-enforcing. This project examines how states and private firms cooperate (or fail to cooperate) on the detection of international smuggling networks.

Related Publications / Updates

Grant to Host Multistakeholder Workshop (ISRF) This Chip Will Self-Destruct (False Positive, Jul 2025) The New Market for Tariff Evasion (False Positive, Apr 2025)

Unknown Artist, Portrait of French Smuggler Louis Mandrin (circa 1800-1859), The British Museum.

Job Berckheyde, The Old Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, circa 1670, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

The Politics of Global Capital Markets

Global capital markets, where we trade everything from stocks to cryptocurrencies, are not neutral venues. They are sites of political and regulatory contestation where the interests of states, private firms, and the public collide.

Related Publications / Updates

Into the ether or the state? Legibility theory and the cryptocurrency markets (Business and Politics, 2024) The FX Race to Zero: Electronification and Market Structural Issues in Foreign Exchange Trading (Global Algorithmic Capital Markets, 2019) Changing Capital Market Structure and Regulatory Challenges (The Oxford Handbook, 2018)

Proliferation and Change in International Organizations

This collection of work investigates the institutional dynamics of international organizations. What determines the design of these IOs? When should we expect them to proliferate? And who wins and who loses from these changes?

Related Publications / Updates

The Proliferation of Multilateral Development Banks (The Review of International Organizations, 2018) Effective Leadership in International Organizations (World Economic Forum Report, 2015)

G.E. Desbarats, Plan of the original central parliament building, 1867, Collections Canada.