Jessica Stanton is an associate professor of political science at Temple University.  Her research focuses on international relations, including the causes, dynamics, and resolution of civil wars; the role of international institutions and law in international relations; and criminal accountability for wartime violence and terrorism.  Her book, Violence and Restraint in Civil War: Civilian Targeting in the Shadow of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016), examines why some governments and rebel groups engaged in civil war adopt strategies that involve the deliberate targeting of civilians, while other groups, in accordance with international humanitarian law, refrain from attacking civilian populations.  Violence and Restraint in Civil War received the International Studies Association’s Best Book of the Decade Award in 2020; the International Studies Association’s annual award for the best book on international studies published in 2016; and the Lepgold Book Prize, awarded by the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University for the best book on international relations published in 2016.  Professor Stanton’s research has also been published in the Annual Review of Political Science, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Global Security Studies, The Journal of Politics, and The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism.  

Professor Stanton is currently working on a second book project, The Global Diffusion of Anti-Terrorism Law and Its Impact on Human Rights, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Initiative, and Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts. The project examines the effects of U.S. and multilateral efforts to strengthen the global anti-terrorism legal regime following the attacks on September 11, 2001. Drawing on original, cross-national data with global coverage from 1945 to 2022, the project documents the global expansion of anti-terrorism law and investigates systematically the factors driving the incorporation of anti-terrorism law into domestic legal systems worldwide. It then examines the human rights implications of this global expansion, analyzing why new anti-terrorism laws had a deleterious impact on human rights in some countries, but not others.

Before joining Temple, Professor Stanton was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota and the University of Pennsylvania.  She has also held fellowships at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, and the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania.  Professor Stanton received her Ph.D. in political science with distinction from Columbia University and her B.A. in international relations with distinction from Stanford University.

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