Tom Oomen joined the Clingendael Institute in March 2022 as an Academy Project Fellow. Before this, he worked at the European Commission as a Blue Book Trainee in DG Trade for the Far East Asia unit for half a year and at Asia Centre, a think tank in Paris, as a junior researcher for 9 months, publishing on matters such as geopolitics, trade, military strategy, and AI policy. In the last six years, Tom has also done extensive volunteering for UNICEF, a refugee support NGO, and a community kitchen.

His educational background is in both economics and defence as he graduated with a master’s in International Security from Sciences Po, Paris, and a master’s in International Political Economy from LSE, London. At LSE, Tom founded and chaired the LSE SU Association for International Security and Peace, which won two prizes from LSE for, amongst other things, the quality of the content it delivered. Prior, Tom obtained his Bachelor’s in Public Administration with the honorific cum laude and two additional honours certificates. During his Bachelor’s, Tom also participated in a summerschool in Taipei and he studied in Beijing for half a year where he focused on the Chinese political economy and political science as well as the Chinese. In Beijing, he won second prize in the national Pro-Am Debate tournament of the Peking University, which was in English. He also speaks intermediate Mandarin Chinese.