Bio:
Jessica Sciarone is a Political Science PhD Candidate at the University of Washington. She received her Bachelor of Science in Political Science from the Radboud University in Nijmegen in 2013, her Master of Arts in Intelligence and International Security from King's College London in 2015, her Master of Science in Crisis and Security Management from Leiden University in 2016, and her Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Washington in 2022.
Jessica's primary research project investigates how fringe ideologies and conspiracy theories move from the fringe to the mainstream. She examines this through the cultural context, focussing on the role of symbols, national myths and nostalgia.
Her other research focuses on the nexus of gender and radicalization, with a special interest in far-right extremism. Her research project: "When Women Are Right: Radicalization Pathways of Women Towards Far-Right Extremist Networks in the United States" addressed the pathways of far-right extremist radicalization. Here, she found that these women are motivated by, and radicalized through, perceived threats to their status. Such threats need not be real and can be derived from real political and cultural events, or conspiracy theories.
Jessica's work on conspiratorial thinking discusses how to make sense of the QAnon movement. In this working paper, she argues that the QAnon movement is more than just a conspiracy theory, but rather should be viewed as a New Religious Movement (NRM). In doing so, it is possible to make sense of the movement and learn lesson about response to the movement.
Jessica also has an interest in queer studies, and she is currently working on a research project titled "Comparative Homonationalism and the Far-Right: How Dutch and American Neofascist Ideologies Imagine Queer Citizenships" (with Jana Foxe). This project examines the variation in the degrees of inclusion that far-right political parties have for queer and trans citizens in their home countries, and the varying strategies of co-optation of support and votes from the LGB Community.
She currently serves as a member of the Electoral College for Expatriates for the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the Labor Party (PvdA). In the 2023-2024 academic year, she served as the Graduate Student Chair for the University of Washington International Security Colloquium (UWISC).
From February 2017-September 2018, Jessica worked as a Junior Researcher at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. In the past, she worked as an intelligence analyst embedded at Amazon.