Dr. Jason Warner is an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) where he also serves as the director of Africa research in the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). He is also a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves as an Adjunct Professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs. He also serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the undergraduate journal The West Point Journal of Politics and Security.

He is a specialist in African terrorism and security affairs, and African international relations and foreign policy. His current research focuses on the emergence and spread of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda on the African continent; the tactics of violence that these groups use; and how non-African international states engage the continent, especially in security affairs.

Dr. Warner holds a Ph.D. in African Studies  from Harvard,  an M.A. in Government from Harvard, an M.A. in African Studies from Yale, as well as a B.A. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (with highest honors).

Dr. Warner is the author or editor of three books:

• Pledging Allegiance: The Islamic State’s Global Provinces in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming, Columbia University Press, 2022,  co-author with Amira Jadoon and Daniel Milton).
• The Islamic State in Africa: Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront (forthcoming, Hurst 2021, primary author, with Ryan Cummings, Ryan O’Farrell, and Heni Nsaibia)
• African Foreign Policies in International Institutions (Palgrave-Macmillan 2018, co-editor with Timothy Shaw).

He has published in academic journals including International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, African Security, Afrique Contemporaine, Small Wars and Insurgencies, The Journal of Modern African Studies, The Journal of Middle East and Africa, The Journal of Human Security, and CTC Sentinel, among others. He is also the co-author of three CTC reports on the demographic and operational profiles of “Boko Haram,” al-Shabaab, and AQIM’s suicide bombers. His work has been cited in various international outlets, including the BBC, CNN, The Economist, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Washington Post, among others.

Dr. Warner has been engaged in the practice of international affairs in various capacities for more than a decade. Among others, he has worked or performed consultancies for the U.S. Department of Defense, the United Nations Development Program, the Nigerian Mission to the United Nations, Freedom House, and the Naval Postgraduate School. From 2014-2015 he was a U.S. Government Boren National Security Fellow studying the African Union’s security policy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The image above is a photograph of a sculpture, “Untitled number IV,” by Kenyan artist Gor Soudan. Coming from his sculpture series ‘Bubbles and Shells,’ the sculpture is made of “protest wire,” salvaged from burnt out car tires used to barricade roads in Kibera during the 2008 election protests in Kenya. Follow his work on Instagram @gor.sudan.