Protecting Australia's cyber and maritime lifelines

Crawford School of Public Policy | National Security College

Event details

Seminar

Date & time

Tuesday 08 November 2016
12.30pm–1.30pm

Venue

Riverbank Room 8, Lower Level, Adelaide Convention Centre

Speaker

Professor Rory Medcalf, Professor Anne-Marie Grisogono, and Dr Tim Legrand, National Security College, Crawford School, ANU.

Contacts

Chris Farnham

In a globalised world, no island is an island. Supply line security is critical to Australia’s strategic interests, our quality of life and our prosperity. When access to energy, markets or information is threatened our ability to defend ourselves or even maintain sovereignty can be put at risk. Australia’s Indo-Pacific geography generates unique challenges in the maritime space in regards to border security, access to trade, resource protection and the maintenance of a rules-based regional order. But as a highly developed nation with a service-based economy, our great reliance on access to information and data flow is also intrinsic in Australia’s ability to secure its national interests.

In this seminar, Professor Rory Medcalf, Professor Roger Bradbury and Professor Anne-Marie Grisogono discuss how we can best protect Australia’s cyber and maritime lifelines. Central to this will be to identify what the primary challenges are and the relevant policy options available to secure our vital national interests in these arenas.

Professor Rory Medcalf has been Head of the National Security College at The Australian National University since January 2015. He has more than two decades of experience across diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks and journalism. He was the Director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute from 2007 to 2015. Prior to that, Professor Medcalf was a senior strategic analyst with the Office of National Assessments. His experience as an Australian diplomat included a posting to New Delhi, a secondment to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, truce monitoring after the civil conflict in Bougainville and policy development on Asian security institutions. He has contributed to three landmark reports on nuclear arms control. His earlier work in journalism was commended in Australia’s leading media awards, the Walkleys. He was on the expert panel providing advice on the recently released 2016 Defence White Paper. Professor Medcalf has played a significant role in relations with India, and is founder and co-chair of the Australia India Policy Forum, an informal bilateral dialogue.

Dr Tim Legrand received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Birmingham in 2008. He joined the ANU in February 2012, and the National Security College in May 2014. Prior to joining the National Security College, he was a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security at Griffith University (2010-12) and the ANU (2012-). He has also held visiting research fellowships at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), Johns Hopkins University and The University of Stockholm.

In Australia, he regularly presents his research on the governance of security (aviation, maritime and critical infrastructure protection) to the Commonwealth and State governments and he has provided public submissions to the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the Queensland Parliament on counter-terrorism and security legislation.
Dr Legrand currently holds adjunct positions as Associate Professor at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra and Research Fellow at Griffith University.

Professor Anne-Marie Grisogono is a complex systems scientist and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Flinders University. She holds a PhD in Mathematical Physics, and has worked in experimental and theoretical atomic and molecular physics, and lasers and nonlinear optics in various universities, followed by 20 years of applied R&D in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (now DST Group), working on systems design, modelling and simulation, and future concept development and experimentation.

Professor Grisogono led the development of DSTO’s Synthetic Environment Research Facility. Subsequently appointed Research Leader, she raised an enabling research program into complex systems science for defence, winning a prestigious DSTO Long Range Research Fellowship for 3 years. She worked closely with Army leaders to incorporate research results into their doctrine, operations, organisational design and reframing of their approach to strategic research and development planning.

Professor Grisogono has held several national and international leadership roles within DSTO, in NATO and in The Technical Cooperation Program, in the fields of simulation, systems engineering and systems science, human sciences and complexity science. Her current research interests include fundamental questions of complexity science and improving the methodologies and tools that can be applied to dealing with complex problems. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) and a PhD from the University of Adelaide.

This event will be followed by a light reception lunch.

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