Dr Alex Manby joined the Department of Geography as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in October 2025. Prior to joining King’s, Alex was a Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Oxford, where he also completed his PhD and BA degrees.

Alex is a political and historical geographer whose work engages with History, South Asian Studies, and International Relations. His research examines how international politics is imagined, practised, and experienced by actors excluded from formal state politics – namely, minority, Indigenous, and stateless communities.

Before undertaking his PhD, Alex worked in education research and policy at The Behavioural Insights Team. He has also worked in widening participation and access, delivering programmes aimed at raising aspiration and attainment among students in East London.

Research

• Geographies of internationalism
• Postcolonial geopolitics and diplomacy
• Geographies of international law
• Political geographies of archives and archiving
• Digital geographies

Alex’s research has two strands. First, he studies the histories and geographies of internationalism. Alex investigates how ‘the international’ has been articulated by actors excluded from formal state politics – namely, minority, Indigenous, and stateless peoples. Alex's ESRC-funded PhD used archival, interview, and digital methods to write a political and historical geography of Naga international thought from 1946 to 2022. He has since investigated the twentieth-century diasporadiplomacy of the Indigenous Hmong community (funded by an RGS-IBG Small Grant).

Second, Alex is interested in the politics of archiving; particularly the deficiencies of state-centric archives for understanding stateless peoples’ international politics. His work seeks to diversify the sources used to study international history, while investigating the political potential of (digital) archives as claims-making tools for stateless groups. Alex has pursued this interest through a project to digitise the archives of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (funded by OUP’s John Fell Fund).