Tim Wilford

Director, Resilience

Tim Wilford researches how Australians think about risk, readiness and resilience – what the public believes about threats ranging from war and terrorism to economic crisis, disinformation and climate impacts, how prepared the nation feels, and what people expect of government. He speaks and writes on public attitudes to security, community preparedness and social cohesion.

Tim led the ANU National Security College's Community Consultations initiative, the most extensive public consultation on national security undertaken in Australia. The two-year, mixed-methods program drew on more than 20,000 survey respondents across three national waves, deliberative focus groups, public submissions and close to 500 conversations across every state and territory. He is a co-author of the resulting reports, published in 2026 as an independent evidence base for governments, parliaments and communities, and regularly briefs senior government, parliamentary and community leaders on their findings. Tim and his team are extending this work through ongoing national surveys, place-based fieldwork and public reporting, and welcome partnership across government, academia and civil society.

Tim has spent more than fifteen years engaging audiences and building strategy across the commercial, media, university and policy sectors. At the College he led the NSC's policy engagement program, delivering around 100 briefings, events, publications and podcast episodes a year, including the 2024 'Securing our Future' conference. For four years he was Executive Producer of The National Security Podcast, one of Australia's leading government and policy podcasts, drawing more than 200,000 downloads annually. Before NSC, he worked at the ABC's Four Corners, Australia's flagship investigative journalism program. His earlier career was in digital advertising and consumer technology, with the global agency networks Publicis and DDB and at Canon Australia.