Our Team

Alyssa Dowling is an Editorial Associate for the Eurasia Daily Monitor at The Jamestown Foundation. She brings experience in both policy and programmatic work, having previously served as a Program Associate on the Eurasia team at the National Democratic Institute and as a Project Specialist in the federal government. Alyssa holds degrees in Political Science and Russian from Kenyon College. Following graduation, she was a Political Studies Fellow and later a Fulbright grantee in Kazakhstan, where she taught English at Atyrau Oil and Gas University.

Anna J. Davis is Fellow of Eurasia Studies at the Jamestown Foundation and Editor of Eurasia Daily Monitor. She is an expert on nuclear energy policy and international relations, with a focus on the Eurasia region and the Arctic. Anna completed her PhD (DPhil) at the University of Oxford in 2024 on Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Armenian international identity, foreign policy, and civil nuclear cooperation with Russia. She is a Grímsson Fellow with the Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson Center and the Arctic Circle Secretariat as well as a Non-Resident Fellow of the Center for International Trade and Security (CITS). She taught foreign policy, politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union, and qualitative research methods at Oxford University from 2020 to 2024. She was previously an Aramco Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Energy Analyst with Oxford Sigma, and Researcher at the Oxford Belarus Observatory.

Arran Hope is the editor of China Brief at The Jamestown Foundation, where he also has responsibility for additional China-related publications and programming. His writings analyzing political developments in the People’s Republic of China have informed U.S. government reports and appear on university course syllabi. He has also appeared on panels at the Hudson Institute and testified in front of U.S. state senators. He edited the reference volume The People’s Liberation Army as Organization Volume 3.0 (2025). 

Arran holds master’s degrees in Chinese studies from the University of Cambridge and Columbia University, where he focused on twentieth century Chinese political history. He has spent time studying and working in Beijing and Taipei, and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, as well as in French and Japanese. Arran previously worked as a reporter for The China Project covering Chinese technology and business. His writing has appeared in The Diplomat.

Cheryl Yu is a Fellow in China Studies at The Jamestown Foundation. She is the author of an upcoming report on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s united front groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany and the co-author of “Chinese Communist Party Covert Operations Against Taiwan.” Her research on the CCP and its operations has been published by think tanks, academic journals, and global media. Yu’s research underpinned a series of Newsweek stories on CCP influence in democratic countries as well as Beijing’s influence-pedaling in local U.S. politics. She has been quoted in media outlets, including Newsweek, Radio Free Asia, and National Review.

Her expertise has informed government agencies and reports, including participation in a panel for the U.S. Agency for International Development and citations in U.S. Department of Homeland Security's report and congressional testimonies. Previously, she was the China Programs and Research Manager at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and a research and outreach consultant for Freedom House’s China analysis team. She has a Master’s degree in public administration from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, where she produced an independent research project on the impact of the CCP’s surveillance of Chinese students in the United States. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.

David Traugott is Jamestown’s Office Manager and Program Associate for Eurasian Studies. David’s work focuses on development, peacebuilding, and security within conflict-affected Eurasian and Sub-Saharan African states, with a recent focus on Ukraine.

Before joining Jamestown, David held positions in the National Democratic Institute’s Ukraine and Southern & East African offices in Washington, DC, and completed a variety of internships and projects in Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda. He received his MA in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from The American University, and a BA in History from Loyola University Maryland.

His writing has appeared in Development Aid and The American University’s Journal of International Service and Transatlantic Policy Center. He is proficient in Spanish and German, and is actively learning Ukrainian.

Dennis Yang is a Research Assistant at the Jamestown Foundation. He researches Cross-Strait relations, Taiwanese politics, CCP united front efforts, and China-Latin America relations.

Ethan Kaufman serves as Associate Editor at The Jamestown Foundation, guiding the editorial direction of Terrorism Monitor and Militant Leadership Monitor. His work centers on militant governance, ideological transformation, and the intersection of language, media, and insurgent strategy in the Middle East and surrounding regions. A graduate of The George Washington University, he conducts research in Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian and has been published in The Algemeiner Journal.

Jacob Zenn is the Editor of Terrorism Monitor and Militant Leadership Monitor, Senior Fellow on African and Eurasian Affairs at The Jamestown Foundation, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. He is the author of Unmasking Boko Haram: Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria (Lynne Rienner, 2020) and has published widely on militant movements in leading academic journals. Zenn holds degrees from Georgetown Law and the Johns Hopkins SAIS Nanjing Center and has studied Uyghur and Persian in China and Uzbekistan.

Jonah Reisboard is a research and editorial assistant at the Jamestown Foundation. His research focuses on human rights, repressive uses of technology, and corporate engagement in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He previously interned with Mercury Public Affairs, where he supported political consulting and government relations projects related to New York City politics. He received his BA from the University of Richmond and is pursuing an MA in Asian Studies from George Washington University.