Lydia Khalil

Building Resilience to Social Harms

Deakin University

Lydia is a Associate Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University and a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute and where she also direct's the Lowy Institute‘s core partnership with the Global Network on Extremism & Technology. She is also the coordinator of the AVERT Research Network.

She has a broad range of policy, academic and private sector experience, and has spent her career focusing on the intersection between governance, technology and security — understanding the rationales behind terrorism and insurgency, how to create governance systems that lead to functioning societies, effective policing strategies and the security and policy effects of new technology. She has a professional background in policy, international relations and intelligence.

Previously, Lydia was international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. She served as a political advisor for the US Department of Defense. Lydia has extensive national security and law enforcement experience, most as a senior policy advisor to the Boston Police Department, working on countering violent extremism, intelligence and counterterrorism, and community policing strategies. She has also worked as a senior counterterrorism and intelligence analyst for the New York Police Department.

She holds a BA in International Relations from Boston College and a Masters in International Security from Georgetown University.