Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob

 

Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob is a scholar, policy advisor, and public intellectual whose career spans academia, international development, and democratic innovation. He co-founded the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy in 2025 and currently serves as its Founding Executive Director. He was previously Panitza Memorial Endowed Professor/Executive Director of the Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship at the American University in Bulgaria. He was the founding Under-Secretary-General for Research, Evaluation, and Foresight at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC).

​

Before joining the OSC, Jacob was Dean of Graduate School and Research at the American University of Nigeria (AUN) and Oversight Chair of the Atiku Institute – the university's development, research, and enterprise arm.  At AUN, he collaborated with UNICEF Nigeria to create a new graduate program in Communication for Social and Behavior Change.  The first of its kind, the program responds to the training needs of communication personnel working in humanitarian, development, and conflict-related sectors in West Africa.

 

He previously held academic appointments at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and the Department of International Studies at Dickinson College. At Dickinson, he helped create a new graduate program in Managing Complex Disasters - in collaboration with the US Army War College and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He led the Dickinson College Bridge Program - an initiative that provides educational opportunities to young people from regions of the world experiencing conflict and natural disasters—and for whom higher education would otherwise be impossible. He was an Adjunct Professor of Media in War and peace in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. 

An expert in strategic and development communication in contexts of war and peace, Jacob has provided expert consultation and policy advice to a range of governmental and intergovernmental organizations including the World Bank, USAID, US Institute of Peace and the UN's Department of Peace Operations. He led an international academic team to revise the UN’s policy on public information and strategic communication in support of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of combatants and co-drafted the revised Public Information and Strategic Communication Module of the UN’s Integrated DDR Standards (IDDRS). He has appeared as an expert panelist and guest speaker at various international affairs, security and development forums including at the US Congress. ​

​

Jacob holds a PhD in Communication Studies (Strategic Communication) from the University of Leeds, UK and MA in Peace Studies from Lancaster University, UK. His doctoral research was supervised by the eminent propaganda historian, Professor Philip M. Taylor (1954-2010). 

​​

Contact to request Jacob's full CV.