Ellie Whittingdale

Ellie Whittingdale is a researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS). She is currently working on an oral history project that is a partnership between CSLS and the national charity Rape Crisis England & Wales, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. As part of this, Ellie is working with Professor Linda Mulcahy to collect 30 oral histories for deposit with National Life Stories, at the British Library.  

Ellie holds a PhD from the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Her PhD was supervised by Professor Linda Mulcahy and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Lady Margaret Hall. It explored how those working within English sexual violence support services talk about and understand sexual violence. Alongside her PhD, Ellie volunteered for a frontline support service and worked within the policy team at Rape Crisis England & Wales, particularly around the Keep Counselling Confidential campaign. A short film about Ellie's collaboration with Rape Crisis England & Wales was recently produced by Oxford's Social Sciences Division. Ellie's PhD thesis will be available to read once it has been deposited. 

During her PhD, Ellie also acted as Lead Student Editor for the blog Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies, student representative for CSLS, and co-convener of the Feminist Jurisprudence Discussion Group. She organised and ran Oxford's inaugural Feminist Jurisprudence Workshop, which is now an annual event welcoming students, scholars and activists from all disciplines to foster feminist thinking and praxis. 

Prior to joining CSLS, Ellie read an MSc in Law, Anthropology and Society at the London School of Economics. Before pursuing postgraduate studies, she studied Law at Durham University and participated in a year reading Law abroad at the National University of Singapore. Whilst completing her studies at Durham, Ellie founded and ran the Durham University Human Rights Journal and was active in the university’s Pro-Bono Society.