Jennifer Murphy

Jennifer Murphy is an assistant professor in the international studies department at the University of San Francisco. Jenny’s facilitating, curriculum development, and research are informed by ongoing investigations in the interdisciplinary humanistic social sciences. Her geopolitical area of emphasis has been the territorial conflict between Western Sahara and Morocco (1975-present), particularly the political organizing and quest for self-determination of the indigenous Sahrawi people in the region. 

Jenny’s international work emerged organically from conflict work, interdisciplinary graduate training and a global network of colleagues in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. She has lived and worked for extended periods in Japan, Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, England, Austria, Spain and the Sahrawi refugee camps of Algeria. Jenny teaches and publishes in English and Spanish and has studied Arabic and Japanese. Her teaching philosophy, international and intercultural experience, and research program converge in the practice of social justice education, seeking out, wandering, and traversing so she can grow as a facilitator for students. 

In her free time, Jenny writes creatively, reads voraciously, plays fútbol and as many other sports and fun games as she can. Outside of her scholarly activities, Jenny and her sister, Teacher Barb, write and produce a social-emotional puppet and music program, Teacher Barb and the Musicmakers, for young children and their families.

• Peace and Conflict Studies
• International/Global Studies
• Feminist/Gender Studies (Critical Race Studies influenced)
• Sociology
• Cultural Studies

• Borders/Refugees/Movement of Peoples/Self-Determination
• Conflict Transformation
• Critical Pedagogy
• Indigenous Onto-Epistemologies
• Decoloniality/Postcoloniality

• Universitat Jaume I, Spain, European PhD in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies, 2010
• Universitat Jaume I, Spain, MA in Peace, Conflict Studies and Development Studies, 2007
• University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, BA in American Literature and Culture, 1998

• Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont
• Core Faculty MA in Peace, Conflict and Development Studies, Universitat Jaume I, Spain
• Core Faculty in Peace and Conflict Transformation, University of Innsbruck, Austria
• Visiting Professor in Maestría en Derechos Humanos y Cultura de Paz, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

• Notre Dame de Namur University, Senior Lecturer Award, 2020
• Notre Dame de Namur University, Sister Catharine Julie Cunningham Memorial Teaching Project Award 2018-19
• The New School, ICSI Scholar, 2016.

• Murphy, Jennifer M. and Pearl Chaozon Bauer (2020): “Beyond Walls: Reconfiguring the Classroom for Active Learning,” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. 30 (2): 174-181.

• Murphy, Jennifer M. (2018): “Elephant Watering (W)hole: Transrational Learning Spaces," in Echavarria, Josefina, Daniela Ingruber and Norbert Koppensteiner (eds.): Transrational Resonances: Echoes to the Many Peaces. Houndsmill, Palgrave Macmillan.

• Aldás, Eloísa Nos and Jennifer M. Murphy (2013): “Occupy Movements and the Indignant Figure.” Peace Review. 25 (3): 333-335.

• Murphy, Jennifer M. and Sidi M. Omar (2013): “Aesthetics of Resistance in Western Sahara,” Peace Review. 25 (3): 349-358.

• Murphy, Jennifer (2012): “A Transnational Politics of Mobility, Thinking From and Across Borders," in Pilch-Ortega, Angela and Barbara Schöttner (eds.). Transnational Spaces and Regional Localization. Munster: Waxmann.