I write about technology, biometrics, immigration, & borders for a variety of platforms, ranging from top academic presses to popular blogs. Below are some of my recent publications:

Online Work

Gateway or Barrier? The Contested Politics of Humanitarian Biometrics. Datafication and Digital Rights (blog) (12 January 2021).

Passing as a Refugee. Africa is a Country (10 November 2020).

Machine-Readable Refugees. London Review of Books (LRB) Blog (14 September 2020).

Countries Around the World Are Using Border Surveillance Systems Against Their Own Citizens. The Conversation (17 August 2020).

In Kenya, You Cannot Go Anywhere Without an ID. I Don’t Have One. Mail & Guardian (13 April 2020).

Mobile Credit Expands Mass Surveillance of Ordinary Kenyans. Coda Story (11 September 2019).

Kenya's Controversial Biometric Project is Shrouded in Secrecy. Coda Story (3 May 2019).

Conversation with Ruben Andersson. Africa is a Country (9 July 2018).

Unthinking Refugee Studies. Africa is a Country (11 April 2018).

Conversation with Abdul Adan. Africa is a Country (11 October 2017)

Jeffrey Gettleman's Tired Tome. Africa is a Country (21 August 2017).

Instead of Building a Big, Beautiful Wall, We Should Rethink Our Idea of Borders. The Washington Post (11 August 2017).

Can African States Offer New Approaches to Refugee Asylum? Africa is a Country (23 December 2016)

Book Projects

Biometrics from the Margins (In Progress).

We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya. New African History series (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).

Academic Papers

(In progress) Exclusion within National Biometric and Digital ID Systems: Case Studies from the Global South. White paper for the Alan Turing Institute.

(Forthcoming) Countering the Spread of Biometrics: The Use and Abuse of Biometric Technologies for Counterterrorism. Report for Privacy International (2020).

Biometrics, Race Making, and White Exceptionalism: The Controversy Over Universal Fingerprinting in Post-World War II Kenya. The Journal of African History 61:1 (March 2020): 23-43.

AHR Conversation: Walls, Boundaries and Borders. American Historical Review 122: 5 (December 2017): 1501-1553.

Rethinking the “Shifta War” Fifty Years After Independence: Myth, Memory, and Marginalization. In Kenya at Fifty: History, Policy, Politics, eds. Michael M. Kithinji, Mickie M. Koster, and Jerono P. Rotich. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Unaccountable Census: Colonial Enumeration and Its Implications for the Somali People of Kenya. The Journal of African History 56: 3 (November 2015): 409-428.

Producing History from Elisions, Fragments, and Silences: Public Testimony, the Asiatic Poll-Tax Campaign, and the Isaaq Somali Population of Kenya. Journal of Northeast African Studies 13: 2 (2013): 177-206.