Richenda Gambles is the Director of Admissions at the Blavatnik School of Government.
As Director of Admissions, Richenda is responsible for the recruitment, selection and conversion of outstanding students for the School's degree programmes: the Master of Public Policy (MPP), the MSc in Public Policy Research, and the DPhil in Public Policy.
Richenda works with colleagues across the School to ensure we select a huge variety of outstanding students each year who combine academic and analytical ability with a deep commitment to public service and an ability to effect change. She is also a lecturer at the School and participates in the supervision and assessment of our MPP students.
She has worked at the School since its inception, contributing to the development of the MPP, MSc and DPhil, with a particular focus on admissions. She is passionately committed to enhancing student diversity in order to make for as rich a learning environment as possible across all degrees.
Prior to joining the School, she was a Departmental Lecturer for five years at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford, with a particular focus on family policy. She has also worked as a journalist writing for a range of UK national and international media outlets.
Richenda has a PhD in Social Policy focused on parenting and the early years (Open University, 2011); an MSc in Gender and Social Policy (London School of Economics, 2002); and a BSc in Social Policy with first-class honours (London School of Economics, 1999).
Gambles, R. (2013) 'Managing the gendered dynamics of parenting during the New Labour government years', Children's Geographies, 11 (2) 188-201
Gambles, R., (2010) ‘Supernanny, Parenting and a Pedagogic State’, Citizenship Studies, 14 (6) 697 - 709
Gambles, R., (2010) ‘Going Public? Articulations of the personal and political on Mumsnet.com’, in Mahony, N., Newman, J., and Barnett, C., (ed.) Rethinking the Public: Innovations in Research, Theory and Politics, London: Sage
Gambles, R., and Whitworth, A., (2009) 'Social Citizenship and the Question of Gender: The Suitability and Possibilities of a Marshallian Framework', in Greer, S., (ed.) Devolution and Social Citizenship in the UK, Bristol, Policy Press
Ben-Galim, D. and Gambles, R., (2008) ‘The ‘public’ and ‘private’ of work-family reconciliation’ in Seeleib-Kaiser, M., (ed.) Welfare State Transformations, Basingstoke, Palgrave
Gambles, R., Lewis, S., and Rapoport, R., (2007) ‘Evolutions and Approaches to Equitable Divisions of Paid Work and Care in Three European Countries’ in Crompton, R., Lewis, S., and Lyonette, C., (eds.) Women, Men, Work and Family in Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave
Lewis, S., Gambles, R., and Rapoport, R., (2007) ‘The constraints of a “work-life balance” approach: an international perspective’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18 (3) 360-373
Gambles, R., Lewis, S., and Rapoport, R., (2006) The Myth of Work-Life Balance: The Challenge of Our Time for Men, Women and Societies, Chichester: Wiley, published with a foreword from Robert Reich (translated and published in Danish: Balance Mellem Liv Og Arbejde – En Myte? Et Globalt Perspecktiv, Narayana Press, Gylling, Denmark, 2007)
Gambles, R., Lewis, S., and Rapoport, R. (2005) ‘Overcoming workplace and family barriers to change’ in Stanley, K., (ed.) Daddy Dearest? Active Fatherhood and Public Policy, London: ippr
Rapoport, R., Bailyn, L., Lewis, S., and Gambles, R., (2005) ‘Globalisation and the integration of paid work with the rest of life’ in Poelmans, S., (ed.) Work and Family: An International Research Perspective, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Rapoport, R., Lewis, S., and Gambles, R., (2004) ‘Work-personal life integration: visions and pragmatic strategies for change’ in Lewis, S., and Cooper, C., Work-Life Integration: Case Studies of Organisational Change, Chichester: Wiley
Lewis, S., Rapoport, R., and Gambles, R., (2003) ‘Reflections on the Integration of Paid Work and the Rest of Life’ in Journal of Managerial Psychology, 18 (8) 824-841