Dr. Jason Warner is an academic currently serving as the Research Director and Senior Africa and Terrorism/Transnational Crime Analyst at U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office.  Part of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)’s G2 unit, FMSO is an organization that seeks to understand foreign perspectives on the international security environment.

Prior to arriving at TRADOC/FMSO, between 2016 and 2022, Dr. Warner served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), where he led Africa research in the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC).

Dr. Warner is currently a Senior Associate in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Africa Program and a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He also serves as an online, Adjunct Professor in the American University’s School of Public Affairs and in Penn State’s Department of Political Science.

Dr. Warner is a specialist in terrorism, national security, and foreign policy, especially on the African continent. 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,  co-author with Amira Jadoon and Daniel Milton).
• The Islamic State in Africa: Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront (2022, Hurst and Oxford University Press, primary author, with  Ryan O’Farrell, Heni Nsaibia, and Ryan Cummings,.
• African Foreign Policies in International Institutions (2018, Palgrave-Macmillan, 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, Small Wars and Insurgencies, African Security, African Studies Review, Afrique Contemporaine, 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. He sits on the editorial boards of African Security and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

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.