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Welcome to the Faculty of Business, Law and Arts (FBLA) monthly Seminar Series.
Seminar Title: Research Security and implications for SCU?
This seminar will be delivered by Associate Professor Brendan Walker-Munro.
Recent moves by autocratic nations to exploit the standards of openness displayed by Western universities and research institutions has fuelled the emergence of ‘research security’, a domain invoking the protection of sensitive, classified or economically valuable knowledge and technologies from espionage, theft, interference and illicit transfers.
Australia — once considered a ‘first mover’ by criminalising foreign interference and university espionage in 2018 — has since languished in legal and policy restrictions on research security. In some part, this is due to an unwillingness by academia to recognise that national security threats to the research enterprise are real.
This seminar Brendan will present his recent research on live cases of research incidents from Australian institutions obtained from Freedom of Information requests.
Journal Publication: How is Research Dangerous?
Event Details
Date: Tuesday 2nd June 2026
Time: 1pm-2pm
Venue: Via Zoom
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Dr Brendan Walker-Munro
Dr Brendan Walker-Munro is an Associate Professor (Law) with the Faculty of Business, Law & Arts at Southern Cross University. Brendan's focus is on 'research security', the use of law and policy to protect university research from national security threats such as espionage, foreign interference, hacking, and technology transfer. He also researches other aspects at the intersection of national security law and higher education, such as research funding, privacy, and digital security.
Before academia, Brendan worked in investigation and law enforcement roles across diverse government agencies over fifteen years, including the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, Fair Work Building & Construction, the NSW and Queensland Offices of Liquor and Gaming, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Prior to joining Southern Cross, Brendan was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland's Law and the Future of War Research Group. Brendan is admitted to practise law in the Supreme Court of Queensland and also holds appointment as a Member of the Queensland Councillor Conduct Tribunal, the Disciplinary Panel of CPA Australia, and is a Senior Research Fellow of the Social Cyber Institute. He has also been appointed as an Expert Associate (Adjunct) at the National Security College at Australian National University, Canberra.
Brendan has been awarded a Bachelor of Biomedical Science and Molecular Biology from Murdoch University, a Bachelor of Neuroscience (Honours) from the University of Western Australia, a Juris Doctor with Distinction from the University of Southern Queensland and a PhD from Swinburne University.