Max Gallien is a political scientist specialising in the politics of informal and illegal economies, the political economy of development and the modern politics of the Middle East and North Africa.

Max is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) located at the University of Sussex. He is also a Research Fellow with the International Centre for Taxation and Development (ICTD) where he co-leads the centre’s research programme on informality and taxation.

Max holds a PhD in International Development from the London School of Economics. His dissertation project, titled “Smugglers and States: Illegal Trade in the Political Settlements of North Africa”, builds on extensive fieldwork in the borderlands of Tunisia and Morocco. He has published on issues such as the regulation of smuggling and the politics of borderlands in journals such as Perspectives on Politics and the Review of International Political Economy. He is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of Smuggling together with Florian Weigand. Max has also been a commentator in media outlets and had been advising government departments and embassies in both the UK and North Africa.