Leonardo is an associate member of Oxford University’s History Faculty and a researcher with the Global History of Capitalism project at the Oxford Centre for Global History. He recently completed his DPhil in history at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, which focused on the British Empire and the founding of the modern Middle Eastern oil industry. He has also written articles on the notorious Tobacco Concession of 1890, which sparked a constitutional movement in Iran, and a broad history of the corporation. His research interests lie in the relationship between political and economic power and the intersection of imperialism and capitalism. Until 2020, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre.