Read more about our Contributors

Mohd Amirul Asraf Bin Othman is a Ph.D student in Political Science and International Relations at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies (CAIS), The Australian National University.  His academic interests are diverse and encompass areas such as Middle East Security Studies, Regionalism, Terrorism, and Extremism, as well as the broader fields of Political Science and International Relations in the Middle East context. You can find him on social media here.

Alice Ridge is the Senior Research, Policy & Advocacy Advisor at the International Women’s Development Agency. She leads IWDA’s advocacy on feminist foreign policy, funding for women’s rights organisations and international development policy and is a founding member of the Australian Feminist Foreign Policy Coalition. Prior to IWDA, Alice worked for five years with the Australian Council for International Development. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and a Graduate Certificate in Gender Mainstreaming and Analysis from Flinders University.

Dr Kristy Campion is Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead of Terrorism and Security Studies at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University (Australia). She has published extensively on right wing extremism in western democratic contexts, with a focus on transhistorical and transnational networks, ideologies, and strategies. Her recent book, Chasing Shadows: the untold and deadly story of terrorism in Australia, is the first comprehensive work on terrorism in Australia and its international and domestic connections.

Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is a researcher focusing on China-Indonesia-Middle East relations. He holds a B.A. in International Affairs from Qatar University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Manchester.

Dr Federica Caso is a lecturer in International Relations at La Trobe University. Her research examines gender and race in the military, war, and peacebuilding. She is currently pursuing a research project on Indigenous military integration and reconciliation in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Her book Settler Military Politics: Militarisation and the Aesthetics of War Commemoration was published in 2024 by Edinburgh University Press.

Dr Vu Lam a political scientist affiliated with UNSW Canberra, focusing on Southeast Asian trade, diplomacy and strategic affairs. He has worked across research, policy and government sectors, and writes regularly on regional integration and Australia’s Indo-Pacific engagement.

Dr Babet de Groot is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Wollongong and an expert in global plastics governance. She has attended five sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, most recently INC-5.2 in Geneva.

Hugh Piper is a director at Ancrum Advisory. He also edits The Policymaker, a digital publication of the Australian Public Policy Institute. Hugh has previously worked at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue, and as a ministerial speechwriter and strategic policy adviser at the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Oxford and degrees in law and history from the University of Sydney.

Dr Pierre Pahlavi is a full professor at the Royal Military College of Canada in the Department of Defence Studies, co-located with the Canadian Forces College, Canada’s Staff and War College. His research focuses on Iran and its asymmetric strategies, public diplomacy, and the use of force in the international system. He has published in various journals in strategic and security studies and has recently published a book in French on the Iranian revolution, Le Marécage des Ayatollahs, prized by the Académie française. He has a PhD in political science from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.