Gwendolyn Whidden is currently a research assistant at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC), where she supports work on atrocity prevention strategy and policy.

Gwendolyn is an MPhil International Relations candidate at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Her research examines decision-making in the UN Security Council in response to mass atrocity crimes. She also recently completed an internship at the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, where she conducted atrocity risk analysis on countries of concern for the Office.

Prior to coming to Oxford, Gwendolyn was a Fulbright Scholar in Morocco, where she served as a university English instructor at L’École Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion in Agadir. She was also a Davis Projects for Peace Fellow in Rwanda, where she implemented an education-based peacebuilding project at a youth village in Rwamagana.

She has studied and worked in Rwanda over the course of three summers since 2015 with various nongovernmental and education organisations and spent her junior year abroad studying Arabic in Rabat, Morocco and as a visiting student in PPE at Oxford.

Gwendolyn received her BA in Politics summa cum laude and with departmental honours from Bates College, where she was a Charles A Dana Scholar and a Phi Beta Kappa inductee. She speaks fluent French and intermediate Arabic.