PROFILE

Professor Tim Legrand is acting Deputy Dean (Research Performance) for the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics (ABLE) at the University of Adelaide, and co-editor (with Prof. Joanne Wallis) of the Australian Journal of International Affairs. 

Tim's research is concerned with national and international dimensions of global security, focusing on global blacklisting and sanctions, digital security, terrorism, political violence and political exclusion. This research is oriented across public administration (law, sociology and public policy) literatures and International Relations (critical security studies, global governance) perspectives.

He has secured more than $2m in grants from the Australian Research Council, including an ARC Future Fellowship (2025-2029), ARC Discovery (2019-23); and ARC National Intelligence Discovery (2024-26).  He has also been awarded grants from the Dept. of Defence; the Gerda Henkel Stiftung; and the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.

Beyond academia:

Professor Legrand engages widely with governments, NGOs and IGOs. He works with the UN as an advisor on blacklisting and sanctions in East Africa and Afghanistan; his research has been cited in the International Court of Justice in The Hague; and he consults to international NGOs on blacklisting and sanctions compliance, including UNDP (Afghanistan), the Swiss Refugee Council and WorldVision.

In Australia, he works with the Dept. of Defence and Dept. of Home Affairs on preserving liberal democracy amidst digital threats. In 2016, he was appointed expert advisor to the Commonwealth Inspector of Transport Security on aviation and maritime security. His research has been used in training for the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, The Department of Home Affairs, Department of Defence, Australian Federal Police and Prime Minister & Cabinet.

His work has also formed the basis of submissions to a Queensland Parliamentary committee, the COAG Review of Counter-Terrorism Legislation and the Commonwealth Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. Tim has a professional background in policy, having worked with the UK's Home Office, the Departments of Health and Communities and Local Government. In addition to delivering public policy training to federal officials in Canberra, he has also delivered policy training to government officials from Bhutan, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam.

The outcomes of this research feed directly into enhancing policy and practice for national governments, NGOs and International Organisations. 

Previous appointments

Professor Tim Legrand joined the Department of Politics and International Relations in July 2018. He has previously held research and lecturing positions in the National Security College at the Australian National University, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security at Griffith University, and also held visiting research fellowships at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), Johns Hopkins University, the University of East Anglia and The University of Stockholm. His PhD in Political Science, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, was awarded by the University of Birmingham in 2008. 

Tim is adjunct Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Centre for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra, Co-Convenor of the APSA Policy Studies Research Group, and is the former Secretary-Treasurer of the Australian Political Studies Association. 

Connect with my latest research and download pre–print versions of my work at my website: www.timlegrand.org

Grant–funded research:

• ARC Future Fellowship: New approaches to combat the misuse of blacklists as tools of repression. (FT240100855, 2025-2029)

This project aims to define the extent of malicious blacklisting used by authoritarian states and their alliances to justify persecution of dissenters/minorities. The problem is growing, as full democracies become less prevalent and as global non-government organisations are increasingly targeted. Using innovative machine learning tools to decipher hidden blacklisting regimes, this research will deliver the first comprehensive, publicly available and searchable dataset of global blacklists; strong political analysis of norms for current blacklisting modalities; and, critically, policies to challenge or avoid malicious blacklisting. Outputs are likely to benefit international governance and support Australia’s commitments to human rights.

• ARC Discovery Project: The Proscription of Terrorist Organisations in Illiberal States (DP200102447, 2020–2023)

This collaborative research (with Professor Lee Jarvis: University of East Anglia, UK) pioneers Political Science scholarly analyses of global proscription powers. The project aims to investigate the use of anti-terrorism proscription powers in illiberal democracies after 2002. Although promulgated by the archetypal liberal institution – the United Nations – proscription powers are increasingly recognised as important tools of illiberal regimes in legitimising human rights abuses and suppressing political dissent. Using studies of Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the project explores the intersections of colonial proscription, UN anti–terrorism norms and illiberal regimes' security. The project will generate new comparative knowledge on the deployment of colonial instruments of control in the ‘war on terror’ and innovate conceptual insights into the global security politics of exclusion.

• Gerda Henkel Stiftung Foundation (Special Programme on Security, Society and the State): The Architecture of Anglosphere Security Collaboration

This project innovates analysis of transgovernmental networks amongst Anglosphere states and the growing interdependency of global and national public policy-making. Here I focus on how elite policy officials form exclusive collaborative transgovernmental networks to resolve collective transnational challenges and transfer policy ideas. In this respect, my work engages with scholarship on transnational advocacy networks and global public policy networks. The empirical research on this topic looks at the dynamics of security networks in Anglophone countries, with a focus on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US. Spanning several major public policy domains – including intelligence (including the well-known Five Eyes network), borders & immigration, homeland security, policing and law – this research has charted the genesis and evolution of Anglosphere transgovernmental networks and comments on their impact on domestic political transparency and legitimacy. With an interdisciplinary Public Policy/ International Relations framework, the project expects to identify new transnational governance pathways that will inform understanding of contemporary security studies.

• Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre: Cyber Security in the Anglosphere

This collaborative research, with Dr Nikola Pijovic, investigates the pathways of collaboration and cooperation in cyber security governance between the five countries of the Anglosphere. The increasing challenges of cyber security are legion – the onset of digital crime, IP theft, attacks on critical infrastructure, dissemination of digital disinformation, and more – and threats the stability of these five countries in different ways. This project explores the mechanisms of collaboration between these states with a view to determining whether and how such forms of cooperation can successfully safeguard the cyber landscape from its most egregious actors.