Dr. Geoffrey Swenson is a Fellow with the Department of International Development where he teaches on the development management course. He completed his DPhil in International Relations at Oxford University on post-conflict judicial state-building in legally pluralist settings. At Oxford, he was a Clarendon Scholar where he also won the R. G. Collingwood Prize for exceptional academic achievement and the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Thesis Prize for most outstanding International Relations thesis. Swenson also holds a Master of Arts in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen’s University Belfast as a George Mitchell Scholar, and Juris Doctorate from Stanford Law School.

Swenson has actively designed, managed, and evaluated international rule of law programs on the ground in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Namibia, and Nepal. From 2010 to 2012, Swenson was the law program manager for the Asia Foundation in Timor-Leste, during which time he received the President’s Award for Exceptional Performance. Swenson was also the founder and in-country director for Stanford Law School’s Timor-Leste Legal Education Project. He was the Asia Foundation’s rule of law specialist in Nepal, fellow with the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation, and senior associate for the Afghanistan Legal Education Project at Stanford Law School. Swenson was a submissions editor for the Stanford Journal of International Law as well as an external reviewer for the World Bank’s Public Accountability Mechanisms Initiative.