The SSIReN team
A/Prof Tim Legrand
(Director - Academic)
A/Prof Tim Legrand is the Academic Director of SSIReN. 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.
Prof Kate Reynolds
(Executive Director)
Prof Kate Reynolds is the Executive Director of SSIReN. Kate is Professor of Psychology at the Australian National University (ANU). Her research addresses group processes (leadership, influence, norms) and intergroup relations (prejudice, discrimination, cohesion, social change), and is informed by the social identity perspective (e.g., Turner & Reynolds, 2012). The broad research questions that frame her work concern the impact of groups and group norms on individual’s attitudes, well-being and behaviour. Groups can be small or large and refer to when people are connected to one another
by a shared characteristic, interest or purpose (ethnic, religious, political, national, attitudinal, work-based).
Dr David Matthews
(Director - Research to Practice)
A/Prof David Matthews is Director of Research to Practice for SSIReN. David is the Information Warfare STaR Shot Leader at the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG). Prior to this David established the Influence & Conflict Analysis Group which undertakes social science research to shape Defence thinking about how to build and exercise influence in the Indo-Pacific. He has held posting as Australia’s inaugural Science Counsellor for the Office of National Intelligence and within the Office of the Secretary of Defence and the UK Ministry of Defence. Prior to this David spent a decade supporting Defence operations and established Australia’s first-ever deployable social science capability, modelled on the US Human Terrain Teams. His personal research background has centred on the politics and sociology of conflict and has seen him conduct field research within a number of highly sensitive contexts for which he was awarded the NATO Medal and Best Public Sector Evaluation Prize.