Dr Ellen Ravndal joined the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University as a Research Fellow in July 2017. Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Lund University.

Ellen’s main research areas include international organisations, the UN Secretary-General, and international relations in the nineteenth century. Her research examines international organisations from a historical perspective and addresses the broader questions of what kind of actors international organisations are and how they gain autonomy. She has analysed the emergence of the first international organisations and their secretariats in the nineteenth century. She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and has published in journals such as Global Governance and The International History Review.