Jessica De Alba-Ulloa

ProfessorDe Alba-Ulloa has been an adjunct professor at the School of Policy and International Affairs (SPIA) and the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine (since August 2024). She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of the Holy Cross, where she teaches Introduction to Comparative Politics and Latin American Politics.

Dr. De Alba-Ulloa holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Université Paris-Saclay (formerly University of Paris Sud). Her teaching and research span applied International Relations, comparative politics, U.S. foreign policy, migration, international organizations, international security, and Latin American politics. She has taught across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Africa, and works in English, Spanish, and French.

Before joining UMaine, she served for more than two decades at Universidad Anáhuac (Mexico), where she advanced from professor to Director of the Center for Research on International Relations. She also continues remote teaching and collaboration with the Autonomous University of Nuevo León.

A recognized scholar, Dr. De Alba-Ulloa has been part of Mexico’s National Researcher system since 2015 and is currently recognized as a Distinguished National Researcher II. Her distinctions include the O’Gorman Fellowship at the Institute for Latin American Studies ILAS at Columbia University; she’s also a Fulbright fellow in U.S. National Security (Department of State), and a Salzburg Global Fellow (Austria).

In global professional service, she currently serves on the Nominating Committee of the International Studies Association (ISA) and previously held ISA leadership roles as Vice President, Representative-at-Large, and Chair of the Committee on the Status of the Global South. In Mexico, she served as Secretary-General and Vice President of the Mexican International Studies Association (AMEI), where she led major academic conventions and faculty development initiatives. She is also a Senior Associate at the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI), a Higher Education Ambassador for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and a frequent speaker at the Atlantic Dialogues organized by the Policy Center for the New South (Morocco).

Her professional policy experience includes service as Diplomat at Mexico’s Permanent Mission to UNESCO, policy advising at the Mexican Immigration Institute, and work as a Researcher at the University of Paris. She is also known as an active public commentator on international affairs and as editor of the first book on IR theories in Spanish.

Selected recent publications include:

• Dominguez, R., & De Alba-Ulloa, J. (2025). Reviewing the US-Latin American Agenda. In R. Dominguez & J. A. Sanahuja (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of EU-Latin American Relations (pp. 575–592). Palgrave Macmillan.
  
• Marsh, A., Sweeting, D., Flores, A., De Alba-Ulloa, J., & Rivera Ugarte, V. (2025). Constructing the smart city beyond the state: Exploring the conditions for institutional change in Mexico City. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544251332070
  
• Villanueva, R., De Alba-Ulloa, J., González Olvera, P., & Lorenzini, M. E. (2024). Missing voices: Latin American perspectives in International Relations (Special Section Guest Editors). International Affairs, 100(1), 1–120.