Dr Jennifer Jackson-Preece

Dr Jennifer Jackson-Preece is Associate Professor of Nationalism at the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a joint appointment in the European Institute and the Department of International Relations. She holds a BA (Honours) and MA from the University of British Columbia and a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Dr Jackson-Preece's research examines how political communities define belonging and how struggles over recognition reshape sovereignty, democracy, and international order. Focusing on nationalism, human and minority rights, migration, and cultural politics, she explores how states and international organisations manage diversity and respond to claims for participation in increasingly plural societies. Her major publications include National Minorities and the European Nation-State System (Oxford University Press) and Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community (Polity). She is also co-editor of The International Protection of Minorities in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, forthcoming 2027). More recent work extends this agenda to socio-economic participation and digital transformation, analysing how technological change reconfigures enduring struggles over equality, representation, and political power. Dr Jackson-Preece maintains an extensive record of research impact and policy engagement, contributing to the development of international standard-setting initiatives within the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Council of Europe, European Union, and United Nations.

A committed educator, Dr Jackson-Preece teaches across the European Institute and the Department of International Relations, integrating constructivist and critical approaches with applied policy analysis. She has supervised over fifteen doctoral students to completion across both departments. Combining qualitative, institutional, and discourse-based analysis, her doctoral supervision spans nationalism, human and minority rights, migration and post-migrant societies, conflict and security, international governance, popular culture, and media representation. She has been awarded funding to design and implement innovative pedagogical initiatives, including video-based assessment, applied policy simulations, and the integration of professional skills within academic curricula. Within LSE, she has played a central role in academic governance and educational standards. She served as Deputy Head (Education) in the European Institute and for over a decade as Chair of the Graduate School Board of Examiners. She chaired the School’s Classification Review Group responsible for revising undergraduate and postgraduate degree classification frameworks, and serves on the School’s AI Steering Group, contributing to strategic discussions on digital transformation in education. She has also been a member of key School committees relating to education, academic planning and resources, and institutional governance.

Expertise

• Nationalism
• Human and minority rights
• Migration
• Political order
• International organisations
• Conflict prevention
• European security
• Cultural politics
• Digital transformation
• Hate speech

Dr Jackson-Preece’s research examines how identity is constructed, represented, and contested across domestic, regional, and international political orders. Bringing together nationalism, minority rights, migration, and cultural politics, this work explores how belonging is negotiated not only within state and international institutions but also through popular culture, digital media, and everyday sociopolitical space. It combines historical, theoretical, institutional, and cultural analysis to investigate how claims for recognition and participation reshape governance, representation, and inclusion in increasingly diverse societies.

A central and enduring strand of this scholarship traces the historical evolution of international and regional frameworks addressing minority claims in relation to shifting configurations of sovereignty, state-building, and political order. Rather than treating “minority” as a fixed category, the research examines how it has been constructed, institutionalised, and contested across treaty regimes, geopolitical transformations, decolonisation, Cold War dynamics, and post-1990 standard-setting initiatives. National Minorities and the European Nation-State System (Oxford University Press) analysed how minority regimes developed alongside and often in tension with the consolidation of the European nation-state system. In Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community (Polity), this analysis was extended to liberal democracies, exploring how increasingly diverse and post-migrant societies negotiate recognition, cohesion, and political community. She is co-editor of The History of the International Protection of Minorities in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, forthcoming 2027), which situates these historical developments within broader transformations in international law, governance, advocacy, and activism.

More recent research extends this agenda to socio-economic participation, digital transformation, and contemporary cultural politics. It analyses how digital governance both reproduces and reshapes inequalities affecting national minorities and post-migrant communities, examining digital divides, linguistic and cultural representation online, and the regulation of hate speech and freedom of expression, especially in digital spaces. Conceptualising digital inclusion as a question of effective equality and power rather than technological access alone, this work explores how technological change reconfigures enduring struggles over recognition, representation, equality and participation.

Dr Jackson-Preece has led a number of funded research projects. Ms Marvel and the Representation of Young Muslim Women, supported by LSE’s Middle East Centre, explored popular culture, representation, and belonging among young Muslim women in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Generation Brexit, funded by LSE’s Vision Fund and Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund, examined migration, youth political engagement, and post-Brexit identities in online discussions. It culminated in the report Building Bridges: A Youth Vision for a Common Future After Brexit, prepared for the British All-Party Parliamentary Group on a Better Brexit for Young People and the Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Dr Jackson-Preece maintains an extensive record of research impact and sustained policy engagement across Europe and the wider OSCE region. She has worked closely with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), particularly the High Commissioner on National Minorities. In this capacity, she has contributed to major international standard-setting initiatives, including the Ljubljana Guidelines on Integration of Diverse Societies (2012), the Graz Recommendations on Access to Justice for National Minorities (2017), the Tallinn Guidelines on National Minorities and the Media in the Digital Age (2019), and the Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Social and Economic Life (2023). These instruments inform national legislation, administrative reform, and minority integration strategies across OSCE participating States.

Her expertise on human and minority rights, socio-economic participation and digital inclusion, and the governance of hate speech and freedom of expression is regularly sought in high-level international fora. She has delivered invited plenary and expert interventions at OSCE Human Dimension Conferences, OSCE Central Asia and South East Europe Media Conferences, the United Nations Forum on Minorities in Geneva, and joint OSCE–UN meetings on effective participation and conflict prevention. These engagements have addressed intersectional approaches to minority participation, with particular attention to gender and youth; the compatibility of national hate speech frameworks with international standards; digital inclusion; and the safeguarding of human and minority rights in crisis contexts, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war against Ukraine.

She authored the Council of Europe report Compilation of Promising Practices on Combating Hate Speech at National Level (2025), prepared for the Steering Committee on Anti-Discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion (CDADI) and the Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (CDMSI). Developed in support of Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16, the report provides comparative analysis of national practices across member states and identifies multi-stakeholder strategies involving public authorities, media actors, civil society organisations, and educational institutions. It strengthens approaches to inclusion, tolerance, and respect for human rights in the context of digital transformation and increasing societal polarisation.

Her policy engagement also extends to advisory and institutional roles. She has assisted the European Union Special Representative for the Belgrade–Pristina Dialogue and other Western Balkan regional issues in drafting the Statute of the Association/Community of Serb-Majority Municipalities in Kosovo. She has also served as Chair of the Advisory Board of the European Centre for Minority Issues (Germany) and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Tom Lantos Institute (Hungary).