Dr Alex Burns is a university research administrator and political scientist. He has worked since 2003 at multiple Australian universities in research administration / management, research, quality assurance, and teaching. He is uniquely experienced to bridge Academic Staff and Professional Staff silos in universities. Dr Burns’ long-form academic format CV is here (on his Academia.edu profile which archives his academic publications). He is on X / Twitter and BlueSky.
From 1998 to 2008, Dr Burns was a writer, site editor, and daily marketing newsletter writer (for two key periods) of the former Disinformation website based in New York City (as an offshore contractor), including during the 2000 US election and Dotcom crash, Enron Corporation and Worldcom’s high-profile collapses, and Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on 11th September 2001 (for which he saw the aftermath). He provided acquisition / development editor expertise for several Disinformation Books titles. He was on the bid support team for acquisition negotiations with AOL Time Warner Inc to acquire The Disinformation Company Ltd (later TDC Interactive) in 2002: all parties denied this when the rumoured deal turned out to actually be a rumour.
He has written academic research and journalism for Contemporary Security Policy, Media International Australia and 21C Magazine, amongst other Australian and United States publications. Early journalism dealt primarily with United States counterculture; later academic work has focused on counterterrorism, the media, and the internet. Producers of Netflix’s series How To Become A Cult Leader used his 2020 conferred PhD as background research for episode 5 on Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo.
He has presented at the International Studies Association’s (ISA) annual / virtual conventions; the Australian International Political Economy Network’s (AIPEN) annual workshops, the Oceanic Conference on International Studies, and the East-West Center (the latter in absentia). In 1999-2004, he organised panels and presented at This Is Not Art in Newcastle, and in 2002 at Straight Out of Brisbane. He is a member of ISA, AIPEN, the Australian Political Studies Association, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Dr Burns has been involved in a personal capacity with the Gurdjieff Work, the Temple of Set, and the Spiral Dynamics community, as well as introductory Chan, Rinzai, and Soto schools of Zen Buddhism.
He was part of the internet sociology team led by Professor Emeritus Trevor Barr that wrote the Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre’s Smart Internet 2010 (2005) report and roadshow that influenced National Broadband Network services planning and internet policy. In 2006-07, he supported the bid team for the successful Smart Services CRC.
Dr Burns has been a guest lecturer and tutor / facilitator at Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology, and Swinburne Online. He holds a PhD (conferred PhD dissertation & PhD candidature archive) and an MA in political science from Monash University (MA mini-thesis); an MSc in strategic foresight from Swinburne University of Technology (selected Masters essays); a BA from La Trobe University; and various Graduate Certificates (including in Teaching & Learning (Higher Education), Information Technology, and Project Management) from Swinburne University of Technology. He is currently a UNSW Canberra @ ADFA student in the Master of Special Operations and Irregular Warfare. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
