Lydia Khalil

Program Director, Transnational Challenges
Areas of expertise

Terrorism and violent extremism; digital technology; disinformation; authoritarianism; national security; emergency management and countering violent extremism; crisis and natural disasters; radicalisation; counterterrorism; policy; Middle East; US national security

Lydia Khalil
Biography
Publications
News and media

Lydia Khalil is Program Director of the Transnational Challenges Program at the Lowy Institute. She manages the Digital Threats to Democracy Project.

Lydia has spent her career focusing on the intersection between governance, technology and security. She has a broad range of policy, research and private sector experience and has a professional background in international relations, national security and strategic intelligence analysis, with a particular focus on terrorism and other forms of political violence.

Lydia is also a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Institute, where she is the co-convener of the Addressing Violent Extremism and Radicalisation to Terrorism (AVERT) Research Network. Lydia is a research member of the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS), where she leads the Crisis Points project on the intersection of disasters, extremism and disinformation. She serves as an editorial board member of the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

Lydia has held previous appointments as an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Macquarie University. She has previously served as an adviser with the US Department of Defense and as a senior policy and intelligence adviser to the Boston Police Department. She has also worked as a senior counter-terrorism and intelligence analyst for the New York Police Department.

Lydia is a frequent media commentator and has published widely in both popular and academic publications on her areas of expertise. She holds a BA in International Relations from Boston College and a Master’s in International Security from Georgetown University.

She is the author of the book Rise of the Extreme Right: The New Global Extremism and the Threat to Democracy (Penguin, 2022).

Trump 2.0
Data Snapshot
Trump 2.0
What Donald Trump’s return would mean for Australia and the world
Trump attack will bolster his dark vision of America
Trump attack will bolster his dark vision of America
For a candidate that has themselves incited violence while playing the victim, Trump now clearly is the victim.
X marks the spot where free speech comes at a cost
Commentary
X marks the spot where free speech comes at a cost
Originally published in The Age
Iran-Israel: The escalation calculus
Iran-Israel: The escalation calculus
Iran’s weekend strike against Israel was thwarted, but how should we calculate its impacts?
Islamic State terror attack in Moscow a grim acknowledgement of global power status Russia seeks
Islamic State terror attack in Moscow a grim acknowledgement of global power status Russia seeks
One of Moscow’s goals in the Middle East was in many ways similar to that of the United States – to prevent the spillover of extremism.
Overcoming digital threats to democracy
Policy Briefs
Overcoming digital threats to democracy
Using deliberative democracy to enhance trust and legitimacy in digital spaces.    
Gaza: The domestic politics of a regional war
Gaza: The domestic politics of a regional war
Expanding the conflict provides both US and Iranian allies a unique opportunity to consolidate their own political positions.
The war in Gaza has not destroyed normalisation … for now
The war in Gaza has not destroyed normalisation … for now
Despite deepening hostilities, common strategic interests still bind Israel and most of the Arab states.
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