Ari's research and teaching interests cross International Relations and Political Geography. He is currently co-convener of the Australian Critical Border Studies Network and previously convened the Political Geography Study Group of the Institute of Australian Geographers.

His research focuses on the forces that bring people together and push them apart. He studies how the boundaries and borders of global politics are constituted and negotiated in urban spaces to reconsider key concepts in IR and Political Geography such as security, sovereignty, territory and political subjectivity. He is particularly interested in the colonial and postcolonial histories of borders and their everyday and infrastructural dimensions. Prior to joining UWA he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at ANU working on "The Cartography of Peace" project and continues to conduct research on how bordering and mapping practices shape peacekeeping operations.

His recent work has theorised colonial afterlives, the politics of neighbouring, political infrastructure and furthered a research agenda on International Urban Politics. His first book The Spatial Limits of Political Community: Bordering the Neighbour in Urban Spain was published by Bristol University Press in 2025.

He is open to supervising PhD students working in his areas of research (Critical Border Studies; International Political Sociology; Critical IR Theory; Urban Geopolitics; Critical Security Studies).