Alicia Ellis

Dr. Alicia Ellis is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of the Master of Arts in Global Security program at Arizona State University. She develops coursework on national and international security, economic statecraft, geopolitics, and war & conflict. 

Alicia was appointed as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2012, during which she served as an analyst at the Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and later as a policy analyst for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. She studied Russian language at the Institute of World Politics, including six weeks immersion training in Odessa, Ukraine. A former Air Force officer, she served two deployments as an Air Battle Manager in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, including three months as the Joint Air Operations Center Liaison Officer. She received her B.S. in Political Science from Northern Illinois University, her M.A. in International Relations from St. Mary’s University, and her PhD in Political Science from Arizona State University. 

She and her husband also run a regenerative farming operation in the Phoenix east valley. She published her dissertation on how the structure of state-industry relations in the agriculture sector impacts democratic accountability. Her current research focuses on the role of agriculture in competitive statecraft and supply chain resiliency in the agriculture sector.