Natalie Sambhi, Founder and Executive Director

Through her research and publications, Dr Natalie Sambhi is committed to helping people gain a more nuanced understanding of Indonesian civil-military relations, Indonesian defence policy and Southeast Asian security.

Natalie is Founder and Executive Director of Verve Research, an independent think tank focussed on the relationship between militaries and societies in Southeast Asia. Since 2020, she has been a Non-Resident Fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program, where she publishes on Indonesian foreign and defence policy as well as Southeast Asian affairs.

Natalie has a PhD from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University on the Indonesian military’s collective memory of its experiences in East Timor (1975–1999).

Natalie has previously been a Research Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, and an Analyst and Managing Editor of ASPI's blog, The Strategist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). She has also worked at the Department of Defence and University of Canberra. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) (Hons) from the University of Western Australia and a Master of Arts (International Relations) and Master of Diplomacy from the Australian National University.

In May 2014 and in January 2016, Natalie was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, DC where she researched Indonesian civil–military relations. Natalie has previously been involved with the Australian Institute of International Affairs ACT, having served on council; the US-based Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) as a host of the podcast series Sea Control: Asia Pacific; and Bloggingheads.tv as a host for their international relations segment Foreign Entanglements. Her writing has appeared in Security Challenges journal, War On The Rocks, The Diplomat, The Interpreter and The National Interest. Natalie blogs at www.securityscholar.org. Follow her on X (Twitter) @securityscholar.