Gregory Pirio

Gregory Pirio has been a global leader in the use of communications for constructive social change and has worked extensively in a variety of countries to design social and behavior change communication strategies. Dr. Pirio has been the architect of numerous radio, TV and media training initiatives in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America with a focus on peacebuilding, conflict resolution and public health, including youth media projects in conflict and post conflict societies. He has also devised social and behavior communication strategies for Ministries of Health in numerous African countries.

Dr. Pirio is a recognized authority on jihadism in Africa, most recently publishing and speaking on the emergence of a Violent Extremist Organization in northern Mozambique. Notably, he is author of The African Jihad: Bin Laden’s Quest for the Horn of Africa (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2008).  Dr. Pirio is also the editor of Rebuilding Shattered Nations and Lives: Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development in Africa (UNHCR), for which he wrote the introduction, “African Conflicts in Historical Perspective.”

Dr. Pirio has also led teams of open source analysts producing studies on threat finance in the Sahel, the political economy of southern Libya, the “Shiite Movement” in Nigeria, the Boko Haram phenomenon, the racial economy of Mauritania, and Islamists movements in the Sahel region including AQIM and its offshoots, among many other topics.

Degrees

• PhD, African History, UCLA
• MA, African Studies, UCLA