Dr. Viden earned the equivalent of a BA in International Relations from Gothenburg University, a MA in Geopolitics from Institut Français de Géopolitique, Paris University VIII, and a Ph. D. in History of International Relations from L’Institut d’études politiques (IEP) de Paris.

During her doctoral studies Dr. Viden was a Ph. D fellow at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. She also interned at the Brooking Institution's Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) in Washington, D.C., where she mainly worked on civil and military relations in Afghanistan and counter terrorism and human rights.

Dr. Viden’s dissertation focuses on the relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia from 1973 to Sept. 11, 2001. Using the strategic Saudi-U.S. relations as a frame of analysis she studies how the images of Saudi Arabia in the U.S. have crystallized under the influence of certain main events, actors and factors. Another dimension that Dr. Viden studies in her dissertation is how the strategic Saudi-U.S. relations fit in the larger narrative on Islam and Arabs in the U.S. going back as far as the first experiences of the American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East in the 1820s.

Other axes of research that Dr. Viden covers are Islam and democracy, Muslim minorities in Europe and the Transatlantic Relations.