Status
Assistant Professor; Regional Coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa; and Co-Director, RSEP Planning and Content
Contact
jrpiombo@nps.edu
Research Interests
African Politics, specializing in Southern and South Africa; Ethnic politics and conflict management; Terrorism in the Horn of Africa; and Democratization and democratic consolidation. |
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Biography
Jessica Piombo is an Assistant Professor and Regional Coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), where she teaches courses on African politics, comparative politics, and ethnic politics and conflicts. Piombo is a research associate at Stanford's Center for African Studies, and a former visiting scholar at both the Centre for Social Science Research and the African Studies Centre of the University of Cape Town.
Piombo’s research specializes on terrorism and countering terrorism in Africa, democratization and electoral politics, transitional regimes and post-conflict governance, institutional ways to channel and shape political identities, and the causes and management of ethnic conflict. Piombo has lectured at sea to deploying navy and marines about the Horn of Africa, and has twice provided specialized education to the commander and staff of the Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa. She joined NPS in 2003 after completing her Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Piombo is the editor of Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade (with Lia Nijzink, Palgrave MacMillan, 2005) and Interim Governments: Institutional Bridges to Peace and Democracy? (with Karen Guttieri, forthcoming from USIP Press). She has authored numerous articles, including “Political Institutions, Social Demographics and the Decline of Ethnic Mobilization in South Africa, 1994–1999," Party Politics (July 2005) and “Opposition Parties and the Voters In South Africa's 1999 Election,” (with Robert Mattes, Democratization, Autumn 2001), and several book chapters. Piombo has conducted extensive research in South Africa, having lived there for almost two years between 1999 and 2001, and has worked with the University of Cape Town, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the University of Durban-Westville, and as an election monitor and member of the Steering Committee of the Peace Monitoring Forum of the Western Cape.
Books
2007 |
Interim Governments: Institutional Bridges to Peace and Democracy? edited with Karen Guttieri, forthcoming at USIP Press, Summer 2007. |
2005 |
Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade, edited with Lia Nijzink, Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. (Peer reviewed)
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Refereed Journal Articles
2005 |
“Political Institutions, Social Demographics and the Decline of Ethnic Mobilization in South Africa, 1994 – 1999, Party Politics 11, no. 4 (July 2005): 447-470.
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2001 |
“Opposition Parties and the Voters In South Africa’s 1999 Election,” with Robert Mattes, Democratization 38, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 101-128.
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Journal Special Issue
Book Chapters
2007 |
“Terrorist Financing and Government Response in East Africa,” in Terrorism Financing and State Response in Comparative Perspective, eds. Harold Trinkunas and Jeanne Giraldo, forthcoming at Stanford University Press, 2007.
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2005 |
“The Results of Election 2004: Looking Back, Stepping Forward,” in Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade, eds. Jessica Piombo and Lia Nijzink, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
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2005 |
“The Institutions of Democracy: Parliament and the Electoral System,” (with Lia Nijzink) in Electoral Politics in South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade eds. Jessica Piombo and Lia Nijzink, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
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1999 |
“The Smaller Parties,” in Election ’99: From Mandela to Mbeki, ed. Andrew Reynolds, St. Martins Press, 1999.
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Piombo's complete CV is available here.
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