Jennifer Riggan
Department Chair & Professor of Historical and Political Studies
- PHONE
- (215) 572-8617
- rigganj@arcadia.edu
- Office Hours
- Tuesday 2-3 Thursday 11-12 and by appointment Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Biography
- Areas Of Focus
Nationalism, Anthropology of the State, Citizenship, Political Identity, Refugees, Critical Development Studies, Childhood and Youth, Teachers, the Anthropology of Peace and Conflict, Authoritarianism, Democratization, Horn of Africa, Education
- Education
University of Pennsylvania 2007
PhD, Major in Education, Culture and SocietyTrinity College 1992
BA, Major in English- Creative Writing
Minor in Spanish
Dr. Jennifer Riggan is Professor and Director of International Studies in the Department of Historical and Political Studies at Arcadia University. She is the current Frank and Evelyn Steinbrucker '42 Endowed Chair and will hold the position during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years. She began teaching at Arcadia in 2007. She is a political anthropologist whose ethnographic research focuses on political identities and state formation in Eritrea and Ethiopia. She has published on the changing relationship between citizenship and nationalism, the de-coupling of the nation and the state, and the relationship between militarization, education and development. Her current research explores the effects of new paradigms in global migration management on Ethiopian refugee policy and Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. She is the author of The Struggling State: Nationalism, Mass Militarization and the Education of Eritrea (2016). She has held fellowships from the Wolf Humanities Center (2020-21), The Georg Arnhold Program (2019), Fulbright (Addis Ababa University 2016-17 & Asmara University 2004-5), the Spencer Foundation/ National Academy of Education (2012-14), and the Social Science Research Council (2004-5). Her current research interests include forced migration, refugee hosting in the global south, and temporal agency among refugees. Along with Amanda Poole she is the author of The Hosting State and Its Restless Guests: Time-Making, Mobility and Containment Among Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia, which is currently under review. She recently received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia.