Nicole Townsend

Dr Nicole Townsend is a Lecturer in War Studies at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. She is a historian whose work centres broadly on studies of war, peace, and society, with a particular focus on both the Second World War and Australian strategic and military engagement with the Middle East region. She is the co-editor of "Australian Perspectives on Global Air and Space Power" (Routledge, 2023), and a Director of the Second World War Research Group, Asia Pacific.

Nicole has previously worked on the Official History of Australian Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is the 2026 David Scott Mitchell Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales. Her current projects examine Australian strategic engagement with the Middle East during the Second World War, the media's representation of student protests against the Iraq War, and a history of the movement against foreign bases in Australia and New Zealand.