Professor Rodrigo Praino

Rodrigo Praino is Professor of Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies at Flinders University. He oversees the Centre's internships on Capitol Hill and at the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna and hosts its annual Distinguished Lecture, delivered by former Prime Ministers Malcolm Turnbull (2025) and Kevin Rudd (2026). He co-founded the Australian Space Cyber Forum, held annually in Adelaide since 2023.

An expert in political behaviour, Professor Praino has spent over 15 years studying how voters decide in low-information settings, with work on scandals and corruption, candidate appearance, young voters, women's representation and informal voting, the focus of two Australian Research Council Linkage projects with the Victorian and Queensland electoral commissions. His newest research turns to artificial intelligence, from large language models as research tools to the governance of sovereign AI.

He is also one of the few political scientists in Australia specialising in space politics and policy. He co-authored Power, State and Space (Springer, 2023) and led the Defence-funded report Protecting Australia: Counterspace Technologies and National Security Threats (2026).

His research has appeared in top journals such as Political Behavior, Electoral Studies and The Leadership Quarterly, and has been cited by the Washington Post, Politico and the Pew Research Center. It has also been funded by Defence, the Australian Space Agency, SmartSat CRC and UNICEF. His commentary appears in The Conversation and The Guardian and on ABC, SBS and Sky News, and he has given evidence to the federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

He holds a PhD in Political Science and was a Fulbright Scholar. In 2018 he became the first political scientist to win a Young Tall Poppy Science Award, and in 2026 he was named Executive of the Year (Academia) at the Australian Space Awards.