I am a political theorist focusing on the politics of technology corporations and a Career Development Research Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford University. Taking an expansive view of corporations in global history, my doctoral thesis researched how Silicon Valley companies have come to control technological regimes—from cloud computing to digital payment systems—and what type of power this confers. I have published in the American Political Science Review and the Boston Review comparing Silicon Valley’s outer space colonization projects with the histories of colonizing corporations and linking them to wider Silicon Valley political exit projects such as cyberspace, sea-steading, network states or special economic zones. My work largely sits at the intersection of political theory and critical technology studies, as well as integrating components of international relations and geography.
I received my PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and was a 2020 Gates-Cambridge Scholar, where my thesis titled “Silicon Valley and the State: Towards a Political Theory of Technology Corporations” was awarded the Lisa Smirl PhD Prize. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I received my BA from Stanford University in History with a minor in Human Rights and I went on to receive my MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice from Queen’s University Belfast as a 2017 Marshall Scholar. In my free time, I host and produce the podcast The Anti-Dystopians, the politics podcast about tech.
