Heather Smith has had 20 years’ experience in the Australian Public Service at leadership levels covering economic, industry, innovation, communications, resources, foreign affairs, national security, and intelligence matters.

She has previously served as Secretary of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (2017-2020) and the Department of Communications and the Arts (2016-2017), as Deputy Secretary in the Departments of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Foreign Affairs and Trade, and as Deputy Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence. She has also held positions in the Australian Treasury and Reserve Bank. She was the G20 Sherpa in 2014 during Australia’s Presidency.

Heather is currently a non-executive director of the Australian Stock Exchange Limited, of Challenger Limited, of Qantas Limited and of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. She is also a Professor at the Australian National University’s (ANU) National Security College. From 2019-March 2023 she was a director and deputy-chair of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

Heather is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) and in April 2023 was appointed the National President of the AIIA.

She is currently co-lead of the 2024 Independent Review of Australia’s National Intelligence Community.

Heather holds a PhD in Economics from the ANU. From 1994-2000 she was an academic specialising on Northeast Asia at the ANU. She has been a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution and has completed the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Paul Lucas is the National Vice President of the AIIA. Until August 2025, he is also the AIIA Queensland President. He is a non-executive director and consultant. A practising Solicitor, he is also a Nationally Accredited Mediator and qualified arbitrator. He is a qualified Urban Planner.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Company Directors; and lectures in Governance in Master’s level courses; he consults to and advises Boards and CEO’s on dispute resolution and in the non-profit area on Constitutional, rules and disciplinary matters. He has been called on to Chair contentious meetings for organisations facing internal and external conflict.

He has held Board positions with and consulted to public and private sector transport and infrastructure related corporations including Airservices Australia, Powerlink (electricity transmission) and was Chair of the $5.4B Queensland Cross River Rail (tunnel PPP) Delivery Authority – Queensland’s largest ever infrastructure project. He is a Non-Executive Director of the Queensland electricity distribution company, Energy Queensland Ltd – with some $26 Billion in assets and a Director of the Central Highlands Development Corporation. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Queensland privately owned airline Skytrans Pty Ltd.

Passionate about Indigenous matters, he is a Board member at the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health one of Australia’s largest Indigenous-controlled multi-disciplinary health services; and Kokatha Aboriginal Corporation a Native Tile Corporation – in remote South Australia covering areas including Olympic Dam and Woomera. In late 2020, he was appointed as an Independent Director of the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation in the Pilbara – whose Juukan Gorge caves were destroyed by Rio Tinto.

He is a Consultant with National Law Firm, Holding Redlich & a qualified urban planner. He lectures at a postgraduate level (Uni of Qld) in Strategic Metropolitan and Transport & Infrastructure Planning. He also has a Cert IV in Workplace Training & Assessment. He conducts training in/for many parts of South-East and South-West Asia, Africa and the Pacific in his capacity as a Governance, Infrastructure and Public Policy Consultant principally for and on behalf of Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade programs. He is State President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

He was Deputy Premier for 4 years and a Minister in the Queensland State Government for 11 years. His Ministerial responsibilities included Infrastructure & Planning; Transport & Main Roads; Local Government; Energy; Health; and Attorney-General.

He was involved in many large transport infrastructure projects in South-East Queensland including: the Springfield Rail Line; Varsity Lakes Extension; Salisbury-Kuraby Duplication; Inner-Northern Busway; Northern Busway; Boggo Road Busway; Eastern Busway; Tugun Bypass; AirportLink; & Gateway Upgrade Project. He was also Minister responsible for the South-East Qld Regional Plan. He was responsible for managing the State’s relationship with the Federal Government and Local Government on many of these projects.

Sophie England is a partner at Deloitte and the treasurer of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. She has more than 12 years’ experience in the delivery of external audit, assurance, and advisory services to a wide range of clients. Her clients include Australian Federal and State Government Organisations, ASX listed entities, private businesses and Not-For-Profit entities. These clients cover a variety of industries including government, financial services, real estate, and manufacturing. She is experienced in several reporting frameworks including IFRS, Australian Government, and AASBs.

Dr Hughes, an expert on energy policy,  is professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, where he also serves as director of the Japan Institute at the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific.

In addition to his academic roles, Dr Hughes serves on the Energy Transition Subcommittee of the Australia Japan Business Co-operation Committee (AJBCC), is Australia Focal Point for the Energy Research Institute Network (ERIN) of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), and serves on the Executive Committee & Council for the International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS). He earned his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds a Masters’ degree from the Graduate School of Law and Politics, University of Tokyo.

In his role as research chair, Dr Hughes will work to support collaboration between the AIIA and the academic community in Australia and beyond. In announcing the appointment AIIA Chief Executive Officer Dr Bryce Wakefield stated “Professor Hughes’ passion and commitment to research on the cutting edge of issues that the Australian public care deeply about make him a perfect addition to our team. I look forward to his leadership, both as a director on our team, and in our efforts to help Australians know more, understand more, and engage more in international affairs.”

Dr Tim Legrand is an associate professor and associate dean (Research Performance) for the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics (ABLE) at the University of Adelaide, and co-Editor (with Prof. Joanne Wallis) of the Australian Journal of International Affairs. 

Overview
Dr Legrand’s research is concerned with national and international dimensions of global security decision–making, particularly in transnational networks and institutions. His work traverses a range of security themes, principally in global blacklisting and sanctions, digital security, terrorism, political violence and political exclusion. This research is oriented around a cross-pollination of public administration (law, sociology and public policy) literatures and International Relations (critical security studies, global governance) perspectives to navigate the complex terrain of security in domestic and international spaces.

His research draws widely from critical scholarship in security studies and beyond, using an array of analytical methods that illuminate how threats are constructed and conceived, and how policies and power are deployed. He is also leading research in computational social science (Data61 and Flinders Uni) that develops network-based models of social media, and machine-learning in large qualitative datasets.

Beyond academia:

Dr Legrand engages widely with governments, NGOs and IGOs. He works with the UN as an advisor on blacklisting and sanctions in East Africa and Afghanistan; his research has been cited in the International Court of Justice in The Hague; and he consults to international NGOs on blacklisting and sanctions compliance, including UNDP (Afghanistan), the Swiss Refugee Council and WorldVision.

In Australia, he works with the Dept. of Defence and Dept. of Home Affairs on preserving liberal democracy amidst digital threats. In 2016, he was appointed expert advisor to the Commonwealth Inspector of Transport Security on aviation and maritime security. His research has been used in training for the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, The Department of Home Affairs, Department of Defence, Australian Federal Police and Prime Minister & Cabinet.

His work has also formed the basis of submissions to a Queensland Parliamentary committee, the COAG Review of Counter-Terrorism Legislation and the Commonwealth Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. Tim has a professional background in policy, having worked with the UK’s Home Office, the Departments of Health and Communities and Local Government. In addition to delivering public policy training to federal officials in Canberra, he has also delivered policy training to government officials from Bhutan, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam.

Grants and funding

Dr  Legrand has been awarded more than $1.1m in research funding 2018-2021. He has been awarded grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC); The Dept. of Defence; the Gerda Henkel Stiftung; and the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.

The outcomes of this research feed directly into enhancing policy and practice for national governments, NGOs and International Organisations.

Previous appointments

Associate Professor Tim Legrand joined the Department of Politics and International Relations in July 2018. He has previously held research and lecturing positions in the National Security College at the Australian National University, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security at Griffith University, and also held visiting research fellowships at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), Johns Hopkins University, the University of East Anglia and The University of Stockholm. His PhD in Political Science, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, was awarded by the University of Birmingham in 2008.

Tim is adjunct Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Centre for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra, Co-Convenor of the APSA Policy Studies Research Group, and is the former Secretary-Treasurer of the Australian Political Studies Association.

Connect with my latest research and download pre–print versions of my work at my website: www.timlegrand.org

Brendan Augustin is the president of AIIA Western Australia. He grew up in Penang, Malaysia before moving to Australia as a 17-year-old. He graduated with double degrees in Commerce and Laws from the Australian National University, following which he joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade where he spent almost 15 years. During this time he undertook diplomatic assignments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and France.

After leaving DFAT, he worked in senior roles in Oil and Gas and Mining, which included international assignments in Mauritania and Timor Leste with Woodside Energy and in Cameroon with Sundance Resources. Brendan returned to Perth in 2013 to work with Woodside where he assumed several roles including General Manager, Government and International Relations in the Corporate Affairs Division and as a General Manager in the Marketing, Trading and Shipping Division.

He left Woodside recently and is now the Managing Director of Bina Group which, among other things, is focused on supporting companies grow its presence in international markets.

He speaks several languages – to varying degrees of proficiency – including French, Indonesian, Malay, Spanish, Tetum and Portuguese. He also has Master of Arts from Monash University.

Michael Cook is the President of the South Australian Branch of the AIIA. He is also Assistant Manager in the Office of the Space Regulator, within the Australian Space Agency where he is responsible for Australia’s engagement with the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, its Subcommittees, working groups and expert groups. Michael has worked in the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources since 2012. He has primarily worked in international science and innovation roles with various bilateral and multilateral responsibilities. He has also worked across a range of policy and program areas within the department including entrepreneurship, the service economy, international education, and domestic science policy.

Professor Marcus Haward is a political scientist at the University of Tasmania who specialises in oceans and Antarctic governance and marine resources management at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania. Marcus’s research has helped to manage the national and regional marine estate for both resource use and environmental conservation and has covered a range of activities from coastal management and deep-sea fishing resources to international arrangements and treaties. He is currently a Program Leader in the Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre (BE-CRC) and a member of the Centre for Marine Socioecology at the University of Tasmania. Marcus is also an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Policy Futures at the University of Queensland and is an Associate at the University of Waikato Law School, New Zealand.

He has over 240 research publications and over 55 higher degree by research candidature completions.

He is currently working on Antarctic geopolitics, integrated oceans management, offshore aquaculture governance and the development of offshore wind energy.

Professor Haward contributed to the United Nations Environment Program Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6) report in 2018, and Review of Outlook Reporting in 2020. He was an expert reviewer for the IPCC oceans report in 2018. Professor Haward was a Contributor and Reviewer to the Australian Government’s State of The Environment Report 2021.

Professor Haward is currently editor of the Australian Journal of Maritime and Oceans Affairs published by Taylor & Francis.

Richard Iron is President of AIIA Victoria. He was educated at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He served for 37 years in the British Army, largely spent on operations in Northern Ireland, the Sultanate of Oman, the Falkland Islands, the Balkans and Iraq.

He led a UK/US planning team in Kuwait for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and conducted the British Army’s subsequent analysis of the Iraq War. In addition, he was an expert military witness in the Sierra Leone War Crimes trials, where he worked with ex-members of various guerrilla groups.

He was the Chief Mentor to the Iraqi commander in southern Iraq, planning and implementing the 2008 operation to free Basra from Iranian-backed Shi’a militias. Later, he was Defence Fellow at the University of Oxford and worked for the UK’s Chief of Defence Staff on developing the UK’s capacity to think and work strategically.

After leaving the Army in late 2011, he led the operation to provide security to the remaining US presence in Iraq. As a consultant he wrote and delivered strategic exercises for Royal College of Defence Studies in London and the Omani National Defence College in Muscat. He was also a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford Changing Character of War programme.

He was Chief Operating Officer/CEO of Equilibrium-Global, an international strategic consultancy based in London. Major projects included advising the Kingdom of Bahrain on how to survive in the post-hydrocarbon age and working with the King of Jordan to roll back radical Islam in the Horn of Africa.

He moved to Melbourne in late 2015 to be with his wife, now a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. He continues to write and lecture widely on strategy, the Middle East and counter-insurgency. His current research topic is how wars end. He was lead editor of British Generals in Blair’s Wars and is writing a history of the Sierra Leone war from an African perspective. He was elected President of AIIA Victoria in October 2020.

Ian Lincoln has been President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, New South Wales, since December 2017. He was vice president from 2015 to 2017 and a member of the AIIA NSW council from 2013. He is a member of the AIIA national conference organising committee and has previously also been on the Outlook commissioning editors group and the programming working group. He was a member of the AIIA Victoria council from 1993 to 1997.

Ian was in the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1967 to 2000 with postings in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Europe. Policy work in Canberra included South Asia, South East Asia, the Middle East, arms control, the United Nations, and intelligence policy. He was Consul-General in Noumea, Ambassador to Vietnam, Director of the Foreign Affairs Victorian regional office and Deputy High Commissioner in New Zealand. He worked as a training consultant to a number of government departments in Canberra from 2000 to 2002. From 2002 to 2004 he was a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal in Sydney. He has been active in voluntary organisations in Sydney and currently co-convenes a seminar on leadership in diplomacy at the University of New South Wales.

He graduated with first-class honours in history from the University of Queensland and later obtained an M.Phil. in international relations at the London School of Economics.

Heath McMichael is President of AIIA ACT Branch. He was a career officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has substantial experience in promoting Australia’s economic, political and cultural relations with Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia. He led Australia’s whole-of-government effort to further regional economic integration in the APEC forum of 21 Asia-Pacific economies for nearly ten years. In Indonesia, Heath managed AusAID/DFAT’s private sector capacity-building programs and pursued market opportunities for Australian companies on behalf of the governments of Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. He has served on the AIIA ACT Branch Council since 2004.

Michelle Chan is the Deputy Secretary, South and Southeast Asia Group and Head of the Office of Southeast Asia, in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She is Australia’s ASEAN, East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum Senior Official.

Ms Chan has extensive experience in foreign policy, diplomacy, national security and intelligence, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

Prior to assuming her current role, Ms Chan was the Deputy Secretary National Security and International Policy in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and was the National Security Adviser and Senior International Adviser to the Prime Minister.

From 2016 to 2018, she was Deputy Director-General of the Office of National Assessments (ONA, now ONI), Australia’s peak intelligence assessments agency.

Ms Chan’s earlier roles include ONA’s Assistant Director-General for Southeast Asia (2011–13) and DFAT’s Assistant Secretary responsible for Indonesia, ASEAN and Timor-Leste (2006–07).

She served overseas as Australian Ambassador to Myanmar (2008–11), with earlier postings in Indonesia (Counsellor (Political) then Minister-Counsellor (Political/Economic), 2002–05), Vietnam and Cambodia.

Ms Chan has a Bachelor of Arts (Juris) and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Adelaide, and a Master of Arts and a Master of Laws (International Law) from the Australian National University.