Jessica Trisko Darden

Position

As Director of the Security & Foreign Policy Initiative, Dr. Trisko Darden provides strategic direction, supports SFPI's post-docs, engages public and policy audiences, and shapes SFPI's annual programming.

Biography

Jessica Trisko Darden is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University and founding Director of the (In)Security Lab. She is concurrently Director of the Security & Foreign Policy Initiative at William & Mary and an affiliated scholar at William & Mary's Global Research Institute. Dr. Trisko Darden is an expert on gender, political violence, and the intersection of political economy and security.

She is the author of three books, Aiding and Abetting: US Foreign Assistance and State Violence (Stanford University Press, 2020), ​Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice (Stanford University Press 2020, with Izabela Steflja), and Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown University Press 2019, with Alexis Henshaw and Ora Szekely). Her fourth book, on women's involvement in Nazi-era crimes, is under contract with Yale University Press.

Dr. Trisko Darden's public commentary has been published by the Conversation, the Economist, the Guardian, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and the Washington Post, among others. She has been featured in reporting by the BBC, CNN, NPR, Politiken (Denmark), the Today Show, and the Wall Street Journal, in addition to other outlets. She was previously a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Education

McGill University
Ph.D., Political Science

University of Texas at Austin
M.A., Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies

McGill University
B.A. (Hons.), International Development Studies and Russian Studies