Kristie (Kit) Barrow

Director Pacific Strategic Events and Implementation at the Australian Department of Defence

Dr Barrow is a practitioner, academic and policymaker with over 20 years’ experience. Her work has specialized in humanitarian and disaster response (HADR) with a focus on the Asia Pacific region, including civ-mil liaison, with military exercise and operational experience. She has special expertise in defence and foreign policy, strategic policy design and implementation, environmental security, and non-traditional security threats.

Dr Barrow is currently Director Pacific Strategic Events and Implementation at the Australian Department of Defence, specialising in HADR in the Pacific. She is also Senior Lecturer in Cyber Ethics at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. Her latest research interests look at the link between climate security and civ-mil engagement, new technologies in HADR, and ‘greening’ militaries in HADR. She was previously Director of International and Domestic Engagement at the Australian Civil-Military Centre. She was an Australian diplomat for 12 years, with postings at Australia’s Embassies in Ukraine, Malta, Afghanistan and Spain. Before joining the Foreign Service, she worked with arms control and disarmament NGOs and think tanks, including the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Dr Barrow served as Political Advisor to the NATO Ambassador to Kabul in 2014-15, living and working on a military base as part of the International Security Assistance Force, and later, Operation Resolute Support. In this role, she provided political and strategic advice to the civilian head of the NATO mission in support of the international security mission.

Dr Barrow has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford (UK, 2017), a PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland (Australia, 2007) and a Bachelor’s degree with First Class Honours in Languages and Linguistics from Griffith University (Australia, 2001).