Karen Jacobsen

Karen Jacobsen is the Henry J. Leir Professor of Global Migration at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is also a Research Director at the university’s Feinstein International Center, where she leads the Refugees and Forced Migration Program. In 2013-2014, she led the Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS) in Geneva.

Dr. Jacobsen’s research focuses on urban displacement, and on livelihoods and resilience in disaster- and conflict-affected areas. She works closely with United Nations agencies and NGOs to conduct surveys and profiling exercises of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and migrants in urban settings.

She has numerous publications, including Host Cities: How Refugees Are Transforming the World's Urban Settings (Yale University Press, 2025), A View from Below: Conducting Research in Conflict Zones (co-editor, Cambridge University Press, 2013), and The Economic Life of Refugees (Kumarian Press, 2005)

She holds a BA from University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) and a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts institute of Technology.