Simona Ross is a doctoral student at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge, specializing in post-conflict and transitional constitution-building in the Middle East and North Africa. Previously, Simona served as the Political Affairs Officer for the United Nations Investigative Team for Accountability of Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) in Baghdad, Iraq. From 2016 to 2018, Simona worked with the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), where she was responsible for issues related to Libya’s political economy and the constitution-making process. Prior to joining the United Nations, Simona worked with the World Bank’s Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group and with the Team preparing the 2017 World Development Report on Governance and the Law. She also worked for the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and the International Crisis Group.
Simona completed a research fellowship with the Edmond J. Safra Center at Harvard Law School, where her research focused on the influence of institutional corruption on U.S. legislation as it relates to foreign policy and the use of force. Simona holds master’s degrees in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and in International Policy and Management from the SIT Graduate Institute. She is the mother of a young son.