University of South Florida

Director, Citizenship Initiative

Other Affiliations: University of South Florida, Sociology

Director and Professor of Sociology

About

David Jacobson is the founding director of the Citizenship Initiative, and Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida. 

Born in South Africa, he received his graduate training at the London School of Economics and Princeton University.  He is a Fellow at the Exeter Center of Ethno-Political Studies at the University of Exeter, and Visiting Researcher at Sciences Po (Paris).

A political sociologist, he works in the areas of immigration and citizenship, international institutions and law, human rights and woman's status in global conflict.

The Citizenship Initiative is developing into a multi-university, government, NGO and business partnership to theoretically and practically engage issues of citizenship and civic society globally. An interactive portal, traveling meetings, the Citizenship Index, "global classrooms," and a new journal are also in development.

He is one of the senior principal investigators on a  project researching  Muslim communities and their responses to different challenges in Western Europe, West Africa and Southeast Asia.  He directs surveys across the three continents, and research teams in Europe and the United States. 

He is also leading a new project which will examine tribes and ethnic groups in Mali and Nigeria, and the sociological changes they are facing in the context of political, economic and security challenges in West and Sahelian Africa. The project will include extensive field work.

Professor Jacobson is the author of, among other works, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship and Place and Belonging in America.

He has recently completed a book entitled, "Of Virgins and Martyrs: Woman's Status in Global Conflict," forthcoming with the Johns Hopkins University Press.

He presented the Haar Lecture in International Sociology at Princeton University. He has had visiting appointments at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute,  Sciences Po and the Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations.  He was the founding director of the School of Global Studies at Arizona State University, where he was Professor of Global Studies. 

At invitation, he has also made presentations at, inter alia, CERI-Sciences Po (Paris), European University Institute, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Geneva, Columbia University, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Stony Brook, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, New School of Social Research, University of Florida, Bellagio, NYU, UC San Diego, University of Bath, University of Heidelberg, University of Neuchatel, NMSU, University of Munich, UC Irvine, and others.

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.    More information can be found at http://globalresolve.asu.edu

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