Seila is an LSE Fellow in Qualitative Methodology at the Department of Methodology. She is also research affiliate at the Oxford Department of International Development and research associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. Before joining the LSE, Seila was a Departmental Lecturer in Global Governance at the University of Oxford, convening courses in Qualitative Methods, International Institutions and Global Governance. She was also a Member of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, where she taught Diplomatic Studies and Practice and Methods in the Social Sciences, and a Visiting Lecturer in International Politics at City, University of London.
Seila received a PhD in International Politics from City, University of London where she studied the work of the United Nations Country Teams in the Middle East and, more specifically, of humanitarian organisations in the United Arab Emirates. During her fieldwork, she was based at the United Nations Development Programme in Abu Dhabi and at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights in Doha.
Seila combines insights from organisational sociology, practice theory and historical institutionalism to unpack international organisations into different geographic scales. In particular, she examines their country and regional offices and the narratives of international staff about their experiences of mobility across duty stations. She also applies spatial frameworks to understanding processes of decentralisation and regionalisation at the United Nations. Methodologically, her interests include document analysis, qualitative interviews, participant observation, thematic analysis, Geographic Information Systems techniques and the study of path dependence within institutions.