Iain MacGillivray

Dr Iain MacGillivray is Research Leader – Strategy and Statecraft at RAND Australia, specialising in defence and national security research. With more than fourteen years of experience in Australia and internationally, Dr MacGillivray’s work spans government, think tanks, and academia. His research focuses on land power and military strategy, geopolitics and geostrategy, US politics and security, and complex international issues in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Turkish politics, and Australian foreign policy. 

Previously, Dr MacGillivray served in the Chief of Army’s Initiatives Group within the Australian Army, where he was the Chief of Army’s senior analyst and deputy speechwriter. He also worked as a UK and US adviser in the international division at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and was a founding member of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Washington, DC (ASPI DC), the first Australian think tank in the United States. He participated as an Australian delegate in the 2025 German Marshall Fund US/Sasakawa Peace Foundation Young Strategists Forum in Tokyo. During the 2021–22 academic year, he was a Yale Fox International Fellow at Yale University and conducted academic research and teaching at the University of Melbourne. 

Dr MacGillivray earned his PhD in International Relations from the University of Melbourne.