Regional Expertise: Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Asia, Indian Ocean, Middle East, Africa Key Credentials: PhD Political Science, University of Queensland; 20 years Australian public sector (ONA, DFAT, Defence, PM&C); Georgetown University; Deakin University; Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Dr. Claude Rakisits is one of the most credentialled South Asia and Pakistan specialists in the Anglophone world, combining nearly two decades of senior Australian government intelligence and policy experience with a distinguished academic career spanning three continents. Born in Kinshasa and shaped by formative years across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Dr. Rakisits developed an early and enduring engagement with the geopolitics of the developing world. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in International Relations from Simon Fraser University in Canada and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Queensland, where his doctoral thesis examined national integration in Pakistan through the lens of religion, ethnicity, and the external environment. His Australian government career spanned nearly two decades across the country’s most sensitive national security institutions — the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Defence, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Office of National Assessments (ONA), Australia’s principal analytical intelligence agency. He served as an adviser to a deputy prime minister and a shadow minister for foreign affairs, and was posted to the Australian Mission to the United Nations in New York from 1995 to 1998, where he was responsible for Security Council reporting. After leaving government service in 2005, Dr. Rakisits established Geopolitical Assessments, an independent consultancy focused on South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He has held academic positions at institutions in Switzerland, the Australian Defence College’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (where he taught from 2015 to 2017), and is currently Honorary Associate Professor in Strategic Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne. He has also served as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. Dr. Rakisits contributes strategic analysis to CommandEleven across Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Indian Ocean region, and the broader South Asia security landscape — bringing an intelligence practitioner’s rigour to academic depth that is rare in the field.