Jen Ziemke

Background

Jen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at John Carroll University, where she teaches courses at the intersection of international relations, international security, and conflict processes. She also works as a frontline paramedic responding to 911 calls with LifeCare Ambulance.

Crisis Mapping and Humanitarian Response
Jen was Co-Founder and Co-Director of the International Network of Crisis Mappers, a global community bringing together researchers, humanitarian practitioners, policymakers, technologists, journalists, and volunteers working at the intersection of humanitarian crises, emerging technologies, and rapid mapping. The network helped advance the use of geospatial technologies, crowdsourced information, and collaborative crisis mapping to improve situational awareness and humanitarian response. In 2011, Reuters AlertNet named crisis mapping one of its Top 20 Big Ideas.

Jen also organized and managed the International Conference of Crisis Mappers (ICCM), with events held in Cleveland (2009), Harvard (2010), Geneva (2011), the World Bank in Washington, D.C. (2012), Nairobi (2013), New York (2014), and Manila (2016). These gatherings brought together an international community of scholars, humanitarian organizations, government officials, and technology innovators. She served as a Crisis Mapping and Early Warning Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and received the University of Michigan’s 2013 LSA Humanitarian Service Award, recognizing one living alumni in that year whose work had made a meaningful contribution to society.

Throughout her career, Jen has consulted with, briefed, or engaged programs and organizations including the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research, DARPA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Joint Staff, National Intelligence Council, National Defense University, U.S. Department of State, United Nations, UN-OCHA, UN-SPIDER, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Center, Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, and TED. Her projects have also been featured in national and international media, including Reuters, NPR, CNN, Voice of America, Wired, The Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and USGIF Magazine. Jen also served on the Board of Directors of the Open Geospatial Consortium (2015–2023) and the MapStory Foundation (2016–2020). She has organized international conferences on four continents and has extensive experience in more than 40 countries.

Earlier Research: Conflict and Political Violence
Jen’s interest in conflict dynamics began in southern Africa, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia along the Angolan border from 1997 to 1999. That experience helped inspire her doctoral research on the Angolan civil war, culminating in her 2008 dissertation at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, From Battles to Massacres. For this project, she assembled and georeferenced approximately 10,000 battles and massacres spanning 41 years of conflict, drawing on hundreds of sources and extensive research in Portuguese-language newspaper archives. The resulting dataset enabled a systematic examination of patterns of violence, battlefield dynamics, and civilian targeting. Her subsequent article, Turn and Burn: Loss Dynamics & Civilian Targeting in the Angolan War, appeared in the Journal of Economics & Politics (2012) and received the journal’s Young Scholar Award.

Her experiences in southern Africa also extended well beyond academic research. During her travels, she hitchhiked approximately 20,000 miles across more than a dozen African countries, developing a firsthand appreciation for the political, social, and geographic realities shaping communities affected by conflict.

Areas of Expertise

See other sections. Also, I'm a certified instructor for BLS, ACLS and PALS.

Research Interests

What explains the variation in the amount of time it takes both 911 dispatch and responding emergency medical teams to begin responding to an emergency? Using the national registry of patient care reports routed to EMS in the United States (NEMSIS), I analyze over 350 million reports to help understand the variation in response times to emergency calls. Do squad chute times vary by day of the week, time of day, age or gender of the patient, or call type as dispatched? We uncover a latent rank ordering of call types by severity. When the system is clogged with nonurgent calls that could have found treatment elsewhere, and when frequent fliers overuse and abuse the system, overwhelmed emergency teams change response patterns as a result.

Education

Jen earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, her B.A. from the University of Michigan, and her certification in paramedicine from Cuyahoga Community College. Jen is currently pursuing her RN/BSN at Cleveland State University (anticipated May 2027).

Courses Taught

• Political Science 1300: Intro to International Relations (ISJ)
• Political Science 2110: Cleveland in the World (EGC)
• Political Science 3320: African Politics (EGC)
• Political Science 3330: International Conflict and Security
• Political Science 3340: Int’l Institutions, Law, and Human Rights

Publications

Ziemke, J. (2026). The influence of operational exposure on scene time: Agency call volume and the compression of on-scene time variability in emergency medical services. International Journal of Paramedicine, 16, 10–19. https://doi.org/10.56068/NFEP4346

Ziemke, J. (2026). Experienced agencies, faster chute times: Determinants of EMS response in the United States. International Journal of Paramedicine, 15, 53–69. https://doi.org/10.56068/DKGJ4494

Ziemke, J., Jayamaha, B., and Jahn, M. (2021, March 25). Crisis mapping and crowdsourcing in complex emergencies. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press.

Jayamaha, B., Ziemke, J., & Jahn, M. (2019). Criminalized security and state capture: Life on the edge in the Sahel. Future of Great Power Competition and Conflict, Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa). Department of Defense, Strategic Multilayer Assessment.

Jayamaha, B., Ziemke, J., & Jahn, M. (2019). Defending the realm in an age of interstitial warfare.
Future of Great Power Competition and Conflict, Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa). Department of Defense, Strategic Multilayer Assessment.

Executive summary: SMA CENTCOM reach-back reports, Part V: Sources of extremism. (2017, January). Department of Defense, Strategic Multilayer Assessment.

Executive summary: Smart phones for propaganda. (2017, January). SMA CENTCOM Reach-back Reports, Department of Defense, Strategic Multilayer Assessment.

Adagio… crescendo… catastrophe… adagio. (2017, January). SMA CENTCOM Reach-back Reports, Part V: Sources of Extremism. Department of Defense, Strategic Multilayer Assessment.

Ziemke, J. (2014). Conflict mapping 3.0. Red Cross Red Crescent Magazine. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Ziemke, J. (2013). Turn and burn: Loss dynamic and civilian targeting in the Angolan War. The Journal of Economics and Politics, 20(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.59604/1046-2309.1180
Received the Journal of Economics and Politics Young Scholar Award for 2012.

Liu, S. B., & Ziemke, J. (2013). From cultures of participation to the rise of crisis mapping in a networked world. In A. Delwiche & J. J. Henderson (Eds.), The participatory cultures handbook (pp. 185–196). Routledge.

Ziemke, J. (2012). Crisis mapping: The construction of a new interdisciplinary field? Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, 8(2), 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/15420353.2012.662471

Ziemke, J. (2012, April). What can live crisis maps tell us about patterns and processes in violent conflicts and war? International Humanitarian Law Magazine: The Changing Face of Warfare in the 21st Century. Australian Red Cross.

Ziemke, J. (2012, January). Geospatial and information communication technologies applied to the health-security interface: The crisis mappers revolution—Volunteered geographic data and the applicability of Web 2.0 technologies to mass gatherings (VIAG No. 18). World Health Organization, Interdisciplinary Group on Mass Gatherings.

Benelli, P., Guarino, A., & Ziemke, J. (2011). Sharing sensitive data on forced migrants. Forced Migration Review, (38). https://www.fmreview.org/benelli-guarino-ziemke/

Ziemke, J. (2011). The International Network of Crisis Mappers. In R. Backhaus, L. Czaran, N. Epler, M. Leitgab, D. Stevens, & J. Szarzynski (Eds.), The 4C-challenge: Communication, coordination, cooperation, capacity development. Selected contributions to the Fourth United Nations International UN-SPIDER Bonn Workshop on Disaster Management and Space Technology. United Nations.

Ziemke, J. (2011, October 10). Crowd-generated crisis maps revolutionize humanitarian response [Blog post]. Jesuit Universities Humanitarian Action Network.

Ziemke, J. (2011, March 28). Disaster relief 2.0 blog series: Collaborating for effective response [Blog post]. UN Dispatch.

Heinzelman, J., Sewell, D. R., Meier, P., & Ziemke, J. (2011, March 7). Lessons from Haiti and beyond: Report from the 2010 International Conference on Crisis Mapping [Peace brief]. United States Institute of Peace.

Ziemke, J. (2010, November 15–16). Real-time reports and analysis for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs disaster simulation tabletop exercise: Earthquake in Colombia [Simulation reports]. Crisis Mappers Standby Task Force, Analytic Team.

Ziemke, J. (2010). International Conference on Crisis Mapping [Special report]. United States Institute of Peace.

Ziemke, J. (2007). Review of The logic of violence in civil war, by S. N. Kalyvas [Book review]. Journal of Peace Research, 44(2).

Ziemke, J. (2006). Review of Intimate enemy: Images and voices of the Rwandan genocide, by R. Lyons & S. Straus [Book review]. Journal of Peace Research, 43(6).

Atkeson, L., et al. (2005). Outcomes and lessons learned from polling voters during election 2004 [Research report]. Election Science Institute.

Ziemke, J. (2001). The Democratic Republic of the Congo. In M. Ember & C. R. Ember (Eds.), Countries and their cultures (Vol. 4). Macmillan Reference USA.