Faculty
David Jacobson
Professor
CONTACT
Office: CPR 240
Email
BIO
David Jacobson is Professor of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University
of South Florida. He has been Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po (CERI and CEVIPOF), Visiting
Professor at the University of Milan and he was the 2017-2018 Fulbright Research Fellow,
at PRIO (Peace Research Institute of Oslo), among other institutions. Born in South
Africa, he received his training at Princeton University (PhD), the London School
of Economics (MSc) and the Hebrew University (BA).
His latest book, with Manlio Cinalli at the University of Milan, Citizenship: The Third Revolution, has just been published with Oxford University Press, in September 2023. The book
is the inaugural monograph in the new Oxford Studies on Migration and Citizenship.
His prior book (monograph) was, Of Virgins and Martyrs: Woman's Status in Global Conflict, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Professor Jacobson is also the author of,
among other works, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (JHUP), a core text on the debate on postnationalism and citizenship. He also authored
Place and Belonging in America (JHUP).
A political sociologist, his two main areas of research are on citizenship and on
civic violence. Under those rubrics he has worked on human rights; immigration; refugees;
religion and conflict; civil conflict and war; borders and global seams; and woman's
status in global conflict. Geographically, his work has covered the United States,
Europe and West Africa. He has directed surveys and research teams in Western Europe,
West Africa and in Southeast Asia.
Other, ongoing projects include a study, with colleagues at the University of Oslo
and NTNU, in the disciplines of archaeology, osteology, philology and sociology, on
Viking violence; and research, with collaborators at the University of South Florida,
on the trajectories of ESG and its relationship to human rights.
He has led a major project which examined 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, the University of Milan, the Leonard Davis Institute of
International Relations at the Hebrew University, and at the Peace Research Institute
Oslo (PRIO).
At invitation, he has also made presentations at, inter alia, Sciences Po (Paris),
European University Institute, the National Assembly in France (IPSE), CEVIPOF-Paris,
UC Santa Barbara, the Sorbonne, Yale University, University of Chicago, University
of Geneva, Columbia University, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Stony
Brook, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, UCLA, OsloMet, 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
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1991