My research is focused on theoretical and conceptual study of international politics and I'm is also interested in exploration of the policy implications of conceptual frames. 

My PhD research was focused on debates on the meaning of causality in IR scholarship, culminating in Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2008). 

Between 2008 and 2012, I led a major European Research Council project on the conceptual foundations of democracy promotion practices, a project which led to the book Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2013) and which involved extensive policy engagement internationally. 

Since 2014 I've been exploring questions around how we might rethink the practice of politics in more expansive, relational, planetary and multispecies ways. My most recent book International Relations in a Relational Universe (Oxford University Press, 2020) argued for a relational cosmological orientation to study and practice of international politics. Currently I'm working on follow-up project on planetary multispecies politics. This involves not only transdisciplinary engagements across sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts but also thinking with non-human actors in different locations and spaces.

I'm interested in how we might practice politics differently in the context of the many difficult planetary challenges we are faced with, including climate change. I'm currently working on a project on ‘planetary multispecies politics’ and what this might mean for how, where and with whom we engage politically.

I'm interested in cross-disciplinary work across sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts.

I'm Co-director of the Planetary Challenges and Politics Centre at Aberystwyth University's Department of International Politics. During autumn 2025 I'm also a fellow with the Panel for Planetary Thinking at Justus Liebig University in Giessen.