Research/Teaching Interests
African politics with a specialty in Southern Africa, 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.

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, USIP Press, 2007). She has authored numerous articles and book chapters on electoral politics in South Africa, terrorist financing in Africa, and transitional governance. Piombo has conducted field research on the US military's activities in the Horn of Africa, elections in Nigeria, and political mobilization and elections in South Africa, where she lived for almost two years between 1999 and 2001. While living in South Africa, Piombo 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.