The Hunt Lab
The Hunt Lab is an interdisciplinary research team in the Faculty of Science.
Our fundamental research and teaching intersects with science, social science, and the arts and we regularly collaborate with colleagues in other Faculty at the University of Melbourne, at other Australian institutions and internationally. We also work with Australian and international government organisations as well as with the business community to provide professional development training in strategic thinking, critical thinking and analytic skills, argumentation and report writing.
In 2025, we will be teaching “Grand Strategy and Analysis” an undergraduate subject in the Faculty of Science. This subject is a core component of the new AUKUS related BSc in Strategic Sciences, but will be offered as an elective available to students through the Faculty of Science. We are also excited to announce that we are developing a Graduate Certificate in Intelligence and Security Studies.
Our team has expertise in epistemology, intelligence and security studies, information environments and misinformation, strategic thinking, risk analysis and futures thinking, expert elicitation, and software development.
Research
Recent Publications:
Kruger, A., Saletta, M., Ahmad, A. and Howe, P., 2024. Structured expert elicitation on disinformation, misinformation, and malign influence: Barriers, strategies, and opportunities. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
The Hunt Lab is currently engaged in research in the following areas:
- Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (and social science)
- Expert Elicitation and ‘group-sourcing’
- Strategy, futures thinking and risk analysis
- Evaluation of analytic quality
- Building resilience to, and combatting disinformation, misinformation and malign influence (DMMI)
- Strategies for improving analytic thinking and communication
- Narrative abduction and structured analytic techniques
- Methods and tools for enhancing collaboration
- Augmenting human analysis with Artificial Intelligence
Example: Analytic Rigour in Intelligence
Analytic rigour is often spoken about in intelligence, but has been poorly defined and understood. The Hunt Lab’s major report on Analytic Rigour in Intelligence sought to change this.
The Hunt Lab convened an expert panel of intelligence analysts, academics and specialists as a key part of this research project, using a modified, online version of the well-known Delphi method. The public version of the report is now available.
More about our Research & Publications
Training
The Hunt Lab provides a range of professional development training and services to government organisations and private industry.
Services
The Hunt Lab provides a range of bespoke services in expert elicitation and group sourcing for complex projects including report writing involving numerous experts.
Example: Mapping our Covid-19 Recovery
On April 27, 2020 an expert taskforce of more than 100 researchers drawn from across the Group of Eight (Go8) Universities presented the Australian Government with a “Roadmap to Recovery”, a report aimed at helping Government plot the best path through COVID-19.
The Hunt Lab developed and implemented a ‘group sourcing’ methodology to meet the challenge of articulating the collective wisdom of this large and diverse group of experts on a complex set of questions in a short period (the report was written in under three weeks). This Pursuit magazine piece describes how the Hunt Lab used its SWARM Platform to do this.
Contact us
Contact us via email or click below.
Header image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay