Melissa-Ellen Dowling

Dr Melissa-Ellen Dowling is a social scientist at Flinders University, where she is a senior lecturer with the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies. Prior to this, she was a research fellow at the University of Adelaide, where she also completed her PhD, LLB, and BInSt. 

Melissa’s research focuses on the ways in which liberal democracy can be challenged, sustained, and enriched in a digitising world. Within this remit, her research explores extremist ideologies, political violence, disinformation, and foreign interference. 

She is a chief investigator on the project Digital pathways to violent extremism in young Australians: Intelligence imperatives and implications (National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grant 2024), and was chief investigator on Modelling Digital Ideological Extremism (National Intelligence Postdoctoral Grant 2021). 

Melissa has published in Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, the Australian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Cyber Policy, Policy and Society, and the Australian Journal of International Affairs. She is the author of a monograph, Writing Russia: the Discursive Construction of AnOther Nation (2020), and editor of the book Digital (Dis)Information Operations (2025).