Ashley Rhoades is a Defense Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation. At RAND, her work focuses on strategic competition, security cooperation, deterrence, terrorism and counterterrorism, and European and Middle Eastern security issues. 

Her past professional experiences include working with the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group at the National Defense University, as the editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Security Studies Review, as a research assistant at Stanford focusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict, as a litigation paralegal for a firm in D.C., and as the director of North American operations for a United Nations–affiliated start-up. 

Rhoades spent two terms of her undergraduate studies at the University of Oxford, where she completed extensive research and coursework on a range of international security issues. Her Bachelor’s honors thesis analyzes the role of U.S. incentives in constructing the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq. Her Master’s thesis explores the relationship between returning foreign fighters and terrorism in Western Europe. Rhoades received her M.A. in security studies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She holds a B.A. with honors in political science and a minor in art history from Stanford University.