Research undertaken in this stream considers changes to Australia’s national security policy and practice. It encompasses historical and contemporary research across a range of discrete traditional and non-traditional security topics informed by theoretical and applied empirical scholarship, including comparative work examining other nations with similar experiences and/or security processes. Its main fields of emphasis are:

• identifying risks and opportunities in Australian national security
• examining how Australia’s security priorities are managed and determined as a result of internal and exogenous change
• charting how Australia’s security landscape has altered to reflect and accommodate transformations in national interests and values
• discovering how Australia’s agencies with security competencies – like defence, intelligence, foreign policy and law enforcement – might interact most effectively as a security policy apparatus, and
• evaluating processes of formal and informal decision-making to understand how choices are constructed in the context of power, norms, influence and authority.