Nonresident Fellow
Danielle (Dani) Gilbert is an assistant professor of military and strategic studies at the United States Air Force Academy. Dani’s research examines the causes and consequences of hostage taking, including the politics of hostage recovery, the use of hostage diplomacy in international relations, and rebel-criminal partnerships in kidnapping violence. Her current book project, exploring why armed groups kidnap in civil war, draws from her dissertation, which received the 2021 American Political Science Association’s Merze Tate Award for the best dissertation in international relations, law, and politics. Since 2015, she has served as a fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project, which trains scholars to contribute to public debates through producing and disseminating policy-relevant scholarship. She holds a PhD in political science from the George Washington University, master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and the George Washington University, and a BA in ethics, politics and economics from Yale.