This strand of my research addresses the question of what gives institutions — such as states — the right to rule within their borders: the question of jurisdiction. I aim to defend a functionalist or instrumentalist account. On such a view, what matters about living under state institutions is that they protect our rights, realise justice and freedom, and are democratic. My work here is concerned with spelling out the details of such a view, and with addressing some important objections — in particular, the worry that functionalism licenses so-called benign annexations: the absorption of a less-well-governed territory into an even better-governed one.

Much contemporary work on territorial justice assumes or argues that land is a special type of good requiring its own distributive principle. I argue against this view, proposing instead an integrationist account, on which land is treated as continuous with the broader domain of distributive justice. Whatever metric of justice one favours — resources, welfare, capabilities — land should be subject to it. This has implications for long-running debates about land taxation and property rights.

I aim to connect this work to questions in environmental justice around resource extraction and rewilding, and to the ongoing housing crisis — since booming housing prices are, to a very large extent, explained by rising land values.

A central question in democratic theory concerns the intrinsic value of democracy: why, apart from its instrumental benefits, is democracy a good thing? One explanation appeals to citizens' interest in democratic autonomy — the idea that it is valuable for citizens to be the authors of the institutions that rule them, and that democracy is central to realising this interest. One strand of my work interrogates this ideal. It also connects to my work on jurisdiction, insofar as autonomy is a popular justification for the claim that peoples have a right to collective self-determination.

I aim to broaden this work in several directions — in particular, investigating questions relating to the conduct of professional politicians within democracies: whether politicians ought to act as delegates for their voters or as representatives, and when politicians are required to speak out against unjust policies rather than work within the system to change them.