Misha Zelinsky is the Assistant National Secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, Australia’s oldest blue-collar trade union. He is a director of Cbus Super, an industry superannuation pension fund with $60 billion under management. Misha is a lawyer, economist and public policy expert with a Master of Public Administration from the London School of Economics. He is the host of the foreign policy podcast ‘Diplomates – A Geopolitical Chinwag’ and regularly features in Australian print and electronic media. His book ‘The Write Stuff: Voices of Unity on Labor’s Future’ was released in late 2020.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Misha will research the insidious problem of political warfare conducted against democracies by hostile state actors; including political interference, misinformation, bribery, elite capture, coercive economic practices and even physical attacks with non-official military assets. The project will promote steps that allied democracies must take individually and collectively to safeguard their democratic and public institutions from political warfare – and fight back.

Home Institution Australian Workers’ Union, Cbus Super
Host Institution Alliance for Securing Democracy (German Marshall Fund), Center for Strategic Budget Assessments
Award Name Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Australian-U.S. Alliance Studies (AUSMIN Indo-Pacific Scholarship)
Discipline Foreign Policy and National Security
Award Year 2021