Born and raised in London, I attended schools in both state and independent sectors, the latter thanks to generous music scholarships (having undertaken music training first at the Inner London Education Authority's Centre for Young Musicians, and later at the Junior Department of the Guildhall School of Music), and support from the Emmott Foundation.
I went on to study International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I gained a first class BSc and an MSc with distinction. Afterwards, I studied at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where I was awarded a DPhil in International Relations for a study of international norm diffusion and the development of Greece's policy against organised crime. Whilst at Oxford, I established and convened the weekly term-time multidisciplinary Oxford Discussion Group on Corruption and Organised Crime, which was subsequently adopted by the university's new Extra-Legal Governance Institute.
My postgraduate studies were made possible thanks to the award of studentships from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), a Fellowship Award for Doctoral Research from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, and an award from the International Studies Committee of the Gilbert Murray Trust.
Towards the end of my doctoral project, I was made Lead Researcher for the Oxford-based team of a research consortium for an EU FP6-funded project examining elite perceptions of corruption across an array of EU and EU candidate states.
Before taking up a Lectureship in Criminology at Birkbeck in 2013, I was able to pursue a series of projects extending my doctoral research, thanks primarily to Marie Curie Fellowships I was successively awarded at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, and at the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP) in Paris, but also thanks to a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), a Strategic Research Initiative Grant from the British Institute at Ankara -for which I was hosted by the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford-, and a scholarship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.
I went on to study International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I gained a first class BSc and an MSc with distinction. Afterwards, I studied at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where I was awarded a DPhil in International Relations for a study of international norm diffusion and the development of Greece's policy against organised crime. Whilst at Oxford, I established and convened the weekly term-time multidisciplinary Oxford Discussion Group on Corruption and Organised Crime, which was subsequently adopted by the university's new Extra-Legal Governance Institute.
My postgraduate studies were made possible thanks to the award of studentships from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), a Fellowship Award for Doctoral Research from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, and an award from the International Studies Committee of the Gilbert Murray Trust.
Towards the end of my doctoral project, I was made Lead Researcher for the Oxford-based team of a research consortium for an EU FP6-funded project examining elite perceptions of corruption across an array of EU and EU candidate states.
Before taking up a Lectureship in Criminology at Birkbeck in 2013, I was able to pursue a series of projects extending my doctoral research, thanks primarily to Marie Curie Fellowships I was successively awarded at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, and at the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP) in Paris, but also thanks to a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), a Strategic Research Initiative Grant from the British Institute at Ankara -for which I was hosted by the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford-, and a scholarship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.