Teaching/Research

J. Craig Jenkins is Academy Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Ohio State University.  He directed the Mershon Center for International Security Studies from 2011 to 2015 and is now senior research scientist. 

His research focuses on the following major projects:

• Rentier states and political conflict in the Middle East
• Global political contention (including the World Handbook of Political Indicators IV project with Charles Lewis Taylor and Marianne Abbott)
• Development and impact of the U.S. environmental movement (1900-2000)
• Political economy of high technology development.
• Climate change, migration and community disaster security in Bangladesh
• Protest and the harmonization of international survey data

Jenkins is author of more than 100 referred articles and book chapters, as well as author or editor of several books including The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker's Movement of the 1960s (1986); The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives on States and Social Movements, with Bert Klandermans (University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Identity Conflicts: Can Violence be Regulated?, with Esther Gottlieb (Transaction Publishers, 2007) and Handbook of Politics: State and Society in Global Perspective, with Kevin T. Leicht (Springer, 2010). 

He has received numerous awards, including the Robin M. Williams Jr. Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship, Teaching and Service from the Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict of the American Sociological Association (2015), fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009), Joan Huber Faculty Fellow (2003), chair of the Section on Committees of the American Sociological Association (1998-2000), chair of the Section on Political Sociology, ASA (1995-96), and chair of the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements, ASA (1994-95).  He was elected to the Sociological Research Association in 1993 and was a national security fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security at Ohio State in 1988, a Mershon Center professor from 2003-06 and chair of the Sociology Department, 2006-2010. 

Jenkins has received numerous grants from funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for Humanities and Russell Sage Foundation. In 2010-11, he received a Liev Eriksson Mobility Grant from the Norway Research Council. In 2011-12, Jenkins was a Fulbright Fellow to Norway and a visiting professor at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) in Oslo, Norway. In 2017, Jenkins and co-investigator Maciek Slomczynski received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a four-year project on "Survey Data Recycling: New Analytic Framework, Integrated Database and Tools for Cross-National Social, Behavioral and Economic Research."

Jenkins has served as deputy editor of American Sociological Review (1986-1989), and on the editorial boards of Journal of Political and Military Sociology, International Studies Quarterly, Sociological Forum,and Sociological Quarterly.

Faculty Links

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Department web page
Project website: Data Harmonization
Project website: Bangladesh Delta: Assessment and Integrated Development (BanD-AID)
Project website: World Handbook of Political Indicators IV
Project website: Civil Society and the Environment
Project website: Middle East Research Project

Media Links

Mershon Center: Survey harmonization project publishes data, newsletter (2019)
Ohio State Insights: Climate change lessons from Bangladesh's disappearing farms (2019)
Mershon Center: Mershon affiliates receive NSF award to develop international database (2017)
Mershon Center: Mershon research project in Bangladesh chosen for grant challenge (2015)
Mershon Center: Mershon, Byrd Polar join forces to launch new initiative on climate (2013)
Research News: Political leaders play key role in how worried Americans are by climate change (2012)
Research News: Ohio State leads country in AAAS fellows named, again! (2009)
Research News: Worldwide hunger more a political problem than a supply problem, study finds (2002)
Research News: Conflict 'early warning' tool may help predict crises in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan (2001)
Research News: Early warning systems may help predict potential refugee crises (1998)

Mershon Projects

Building Disaster Resilience through Human Capital and Community Organization: A Study of Coastal Bangladesh (2019-20)
Managing Disaster Risk: Launching Micro-Insurance in Bangladesh, with C.K. Shum and Joyce Chen (2017-18)
Pilot Study on International Security: Disaster Refugees and Flood Early Warning in Bangladesh, with C.K. Shum and Joyce Chen (2016-17)
State Responses to Contention and New Waves of Protest: Using Harmonized Survey Data for 82 Countries, with Kazimierz Slomczynski (2016-17)
Climate Change Challenges and Community Adaption in Coastal Bangladesh, with C.K. Shum (2014-15)
Climate, Security, Health, and Resilience, with Geoffrey Parker, Daniel Sui, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, and Lonnie Thompson (2013-14)
Global Conflict Assessment: Evaluating Frameworks, Methods and Dissemination (2011-12)
World Handbook of Political Indicators IV (2006-07, 2010-11)
Rentierism and Conflict in the Middle East, with Katherine Meyer and Hassan Aly (2009-10)
Development of Islamic Insurgency in Egypt, 1986-1999 (2008-09) 
The Dissent/Repression Nexus in the Middle East, with Katherine Meyer (2006-08)
The Ecology of Terrorist Organizations, with Edward Crenshaw (2007-08)
If it Bleeds, It Leads: Assessing Media Effects on Transnational Terrorism, with Edward Crenshaw (2007-08)
Rentier States and International Terrorism in Ecological Focus, with Edward Crenshaw (2006-07)
Terror’s Fourth Wave, with Edward Crenshaw (2005-06)
Deprivation, Violence and Identities (2003-04)