Dr. Jessica Anderson is an affiliate of ISIM and adjunct professor at Georgetown and the Elliott School, where she teaches courses of humanitarian crises and the refugee and migrant crisis. Trained as a political scientist, her research focuses on the politics of aid, displacement, and international organizations. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from The George Washington University, as well as an M.A. in Forced Migration from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.

Dr. Anderson enjoys engaging with the policy community and pursuing policy-relevant research. In the past, she received a Rosenthal fellowship to work at the State Department and a Scoville fellowship to work at the Stimson Center’s Future of Peace Operations program. She also spent significant time abroad working for her own startup and aid organizations like the International Organization for Migration, Oxfam, and the South African Human Rights Commission. Her work has been supported by a number of national awards and her writing has appeared in popular outlets like CFR's Africa in Transition, the Washington Post's Monkey Cage, and Foreign Policy.