Emily Paddon Rhoads is the 2024-2025 J.W. McConnell Visiting Scholar at the Max Bell School of Public Policy and Associate Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College. Previously, she was an Associate Faculty member at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and research collaborator on the European Research Council-funded interdisciplinary project, “Individualization of War: Reconfiguring the Ethics, Law, and Politics of Armed Conflict”.Â
Paddon Rhoads’ research and policy engagement focuses on civilian protection and civilian agency in armed conflict, humanitarianism, peacekeeping, and the role of international institutions. She is the author of Taking Sides in Peacekeeping: Impartiality and the Future of the United Nations (Oxford University Press 2016), co-editor of Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings: A Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press 2023), as well as over 15 journal articles and book chapters. Her research has been supported by the European Research Council, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Government of Canada (National Defense), the British Council, and the Australian Government’s Civil-Military Center.  She has conducted fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Kenya, and Iraq.Â
Paddon Rhoads has consulted for governments, the private sector, and NGOs, and has served as academic advisor on protection and peacekeeping-related issues to the United Nations. She is a former Action Canada public policy fellow, Sauve Scholar, and has been a visiting scholar at the International Peace Institute and Columbia University. Paddon Rhoads is an elected fellow of the Rift Valley Institute, a non-profit organization working in eastern and central Africa to bring local knowledge to bear on social, political, and economic development. She earned her MPhil and DPhil (Phd) from the University of Oxford, and her A.B. from Brown University.Â
Courses offered:
Core Policy Course: PPOL 613, Global Policy and Political Landscape
