Jennifer Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in PoLIS. Her main research interests are gender and foreign policy (particularly the concept of a 'feminist' foreign policy); gender and security; women’s rights in post-conflict divided societies; and sexual and reproductive health and rights in international policy-making.

From 2022-2026 she is PI on the ESRC New Investigator project Gender in Foreign Policymaking: the academic and policy implications of feminist foreign policy. This project considers the growth and meaning of states' increasing attention to gender equality in their foreign policies. She is also a CoI on a 5-year UKRI-funded project on menstrual justice in low- and middle-income countries (Mejara - Menstrual Justice in Nepal and Guatemala (mejara-project.com). From 2018-2019, she was Co-I on the GCRF funded project Menstrual Taboos and Menstrual Hygiene Policy in Nepal.  

She is the author of Abortion Law and Political Institutions: Explaining Policy Resistance (Palgrave, 2019). Her work has been published in, amongst others, European Journal of International Security, International Studies Review, International Studies Perspectives, the British Journal of Politics and International Relations and the International Political Science Review.

She is elected to University Senate from Academic Assembly and was formerly Athena Swan Co-Champion for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She convenes the MA in Gender and Politics. 

Dr Thomson joined the University of Bath in 2017. She previously worked at De Montfort University and as Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. She received her PhD from Queen Mary University of London in 2016.