Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob

 

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Dr. Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob is the Panitza Memorial Endowed Executive Director of the Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship at the American University in Bulgaria. He recently served as the Under-Secretary-General for Research, Evaluation, and Foresight at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC). At the OSC, he led the conceptualization and design of the organization's flagship programs including the Greater South Information System - a revolutionary open access and collaborative hub of academic and endogenous resources to foster knowledge democratization and collaboration among scholars, policymakers, and practitioners across OSC Member States and Associate Institutions.

 

Before joining the OSC, Jacob was the 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. 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, 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. He was a two-term judge for the P2P Facebook Global Digital Challenge.

Jacob is a member of the Research Advisory Council of Resolve - a global consortium of researchers, research organizations, policymakers, and practitioners committed to empirically driven, locally defined research on the drivers of violent extremism and sources of community resilience - housed at the US Institute of Peace. He co-led Resolve’s methodological and ethical guide on violent extremism research.  His regional focus is on West, Central, and East Africa. He is the author of "Convincing Rebel Fighters to Disarm: UN Information Operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo" (De Gruyter, 2017). His book, "Transactional Radio Instruction: Improving Educational Outcomes for Children in Conflict Zones’ (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2020) explores lessons from a US government-funded education intervention in northeast Nigeria, which he led.

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Jacob was the co-founder and chair of the Research Group on UN Media and Peace Processes (RUNMAPP). Housed at Sheffield University's Centre for Freedom of the Media, RUNMAPP seeks to address research, practice, and policy gaps in UN media during complex peace-building and peacekeeping processes. Notably, in 2018, RUNMAPP convened the first multi-stakeholder forum on the Transition of UN Peace Operations Radio Stations, in collaboration with Fondation Hirondelle and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Geneva, Switzerland. Also, in 2020, RUNMAPP worked with the UN's Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the Department of Peace Operations to revise the Public Information and Strategic Communication module of the IDDRS. 

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Jacob holds a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Leeds, UK. His doctoral research was supervised by the eminent propaganda historian, Professor Philip M. Taylor (1954-2010). He previously studied at Lancaster University for his MA (in Peace Studies) and at the University of Uyo for his bachelor's degree in Communication Arts.  Jacob is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. 

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