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David Jacobson
Office: CPR 240 Phone: (813) 974-2893 Email: djacobson (at) usf.edu
David Jacobson is Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida. He is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He was the 2017-2018 Fulbright Research Fellow, at PRIO (Peace Research Institute of Oslo).
Born in South Africa, he received his training at Princeton University (PhD), the London School of Economics (MSc) and the Hebrew University (BA).
A political sociologist, his two main areas of work are on citizenship, and on civic violence. Under those rubrics he has worked on citizenship and human rights; immigration; refugees; religion and conflict; civil conflict and war; borders and global seams; and woman's status in global conflict. Geographically, he has worked has covered the United States, Europe and West Africa. He has directed surveys and research teams across the three continents.
His most recent book (monograph) is, "Of Virgins and Martyrs: Woman's Status in Global Conflict," Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.
He is presently completing a book, with Manlio Cinalli at the University of Milan, entitled "Citizenship: The Third Revolution."
Professor Jacobson is also the author of, among other works, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship, a core text on the debate on postnationalism and citizenship. He also authored Place and Belonging in America.
He is also working towards, with collaborators in computer science, the development of Big Data research platform for social science research, with an application on determining the bases of civil and social conflict.
He led a major project which examines how Islamist militancy has risen and remained engaged in Nigeria and West Africa, focusing on the ethnic, political, economic and geographic contexts. The research has been extensively disseminated in scholarship, international media and presentations to policy bodies. The work has extended beyond Nigeria to Mali, West and North Africa.
He also was one of the P.I's on a a five year, multi-university, three continent examination of trends in Muslim communities, in the context of the rise of militant movements and the different forms of opposition to these movements. The study drew on surveys, ethnography and web scraping and studies.
He developed, with Natalie Deckard, the "Tribalism Index," for gauging levels of tribalism and the outcomes for civil violence, voting, civic resilience and other political and sociological outcomes.
He presented the Haar Lecture in International Sociology at Princeton University. He has had visiting appointments at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, CEVIPOF and CERI at Sciences Po and the Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations at the Hebrew University, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
At invitation, he has also made presentations at, inter alia, CERI-Sciences Po (Paris), European University Institute, the National Assembly in France (IPSE), CEVIPOF-Paris, UC Santa Barbara, Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Geneva, Columbia University, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Stony Brook, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, UCLA, New School of Social Research, University of Florida, Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, Stockholm University, NYU, UC San Diego, University of Bath, University of Heidelberg, University of Neuchatel, NMSU, University of Munich, University of Oslo, UC Irvine, CEVIPOF, Whitlam Institute-Sydney, Franklin College in Lugano-Switzerland, and others.
His work has featured in Salon.com, New York Times, France 2 Television, the Nation, La Croix, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Tages Anzeiger, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Foreign Policy, Sonntags Zeitung, Haaretz, the German feminist magazine EMMA, and a variety of other media outlets.
He also co-founded the Global Resolve Initiative, which helps villagers in developing countries develop alternative energy technologies, with a pilot project in Ghana. Global Resolve received the 2009 Creasman Award for Excellence.
He can be reached at djacobson@usf.edu
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1991