Find an expert

Associate Professor Rebecca Ananian-Welsh is a constitutional law scholar, Executive Director of Public Law with the Centre for Public International and Comparative Law (CPICL), and Chief Editor of the University of Queensland Law Journal. Her research focuses on courts, national security and press freedom and she has published widely in these fields, including more than 25 journal articles and 4 books. At present, she is pursuing research projects around: the nature and future of courts; the intersections between the press, government and security; and the meaning of 'terrorist act' - all while watching and waiting for the latest case on the separation of judicial power.

Rebecca has been a visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and is an Honorary Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Prior to joining UQ, She held positions at UNSW Law with the Laureate Fellowship Project 'Anti-Terror Laws and the Democratic Challenge' and the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law's Terrorism & Law Project, as a litigation solicitor with global law firm DLA Piper, and as a legal officer with the Federal Attorney-General's Department Canberra.

Dr Emma Belton is an Early Career Researcher, with a strong track record of research in radicalisation and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) demonstrated by a number of academic achievements and collaborations with industry partners. She acted as lead project manager on an ARC funded project responsible for the development of the Profiles of Individual Radicalisation in Australia (PIRA) dataset, which collects data on terrorist offenders and individuals who have radicalised to extremism. She has received training in the use and application of the Violent Extremist Risk Assessment (VERA-2R) tool by the Dept of Home Affairs and undertaken a validation study of the VERA-2R instrument. She has also worked with various government and law enforcement agencies to conduct evaluations of custody and community-based CVE programs that target convicted terrorists and vulnerable populations at risk of radicalisation. She holds a PhD in Criminology from the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on characteristics of individual radicalisation and violent extremism in Australia and aims to improve understanding of risk factors associated with violent compared to non-violent extremists.

Dr Adrian Cherney is a Professor in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. He was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow. He has completed evaluations of programs aimed at countering violent extremism and is undertaking research on violent extremism risk assessment. His ARC Future Fellowship explored case-managed interventions targeting convicted terrorists and those at risk of radicalisation.