On Thursday 30 April, Richard McGregor, Lowy Institute Senior Fellow and a former Beijing bureau chief for both The Australian and The Financial Times, hosted a live-streamed event with Josh Chin, deputy China bureau chief (in exile) of the Wall Street Journal, Anna Fifield, Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post, and Jane Perlez, Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times. China has expelled a record number of foreign journalists in recent months, mostly Americans, but also a number of Australians. Although the expulsions have been part of a tit-for-tat battle between Washington and Beijing over the status of journalists in both countries, they also reflect a tougher attitude to foreign criticism by Beijing, and a more uncompromising foreign policy generally.

On Wednesday 8 April, Australia’s leading authority on US foreign policy, Dr Michael Fullilove, and senior China analyst, Richard McGregor, examined the implications of COVID-19 for the most important international relationship of our time – the US-China relationship. Lowy Institute Director of Research Alex Oliver chaired this first-ever Lowy Institute Live event, which was streamed via Zoom and included live audience questions.
 
Dr Michael Fullilove AM is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. He writes widely on Australian and US foreign policy in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Australian press. Dr Fullilove is the author of Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (Penguin). 

Richard McGregor is a Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute and an award-winning journalist and author with unrivalled experience reporting on the top-level politics and economics of east Asia, primarily China and Japan. He was the Financial Times bureau chief in Beijing and Shanghai between 2000 and 2009, and headed its Washington office for four years from 2011.

Alex Oliver is the Director of Research at the Lowy Institute, where she is responsible for the Institute's team of experts and directs the research program. Until 2018, she directed the Lowy Institute's program on diplomacy and public opinion, including the annual Lowy Institute Poll. 

On Thursday, 10 October 2019, the Lowy Institute officially reopened its historic headquarters at 31 Bligh Street. Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove and Chairman Sir Frank Lowy addressed the crowd about the importance of the building to the Institute’s work.

On Wednesday 27 March, the Lowy Institute hosted Mike Burgess, Director-General on the Australian Signals Directorate, for an address on offensive cyber. After the address, Lowy Institute Director Dr Michael Fullilove moderated a Q&A session with the audience.

To mark International Women’s Day in 2019, the Lowy Institute in partnership with Telstra hosted a special event on the impact of authoritarian regimes on women.

Today is the era of the “strongman”, as a new wave of authoritarianism spreads across the globe. In countries as diverse as Russia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Poland, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines, macho leadership reigns. Even in contemporary western democracies such as the United States, the ranks of authoritarian populists have swelled.

Aside from the grand displays of force, clampdown on minority rights and gagging of the press which typically characterise authoritarian regimes, another striking feature is the limits they impose on the freedoms and power of women.

The panel featured:

Dr Nicole Curato, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance
Lydia Khalil, Research Fellow in the Lowy Institute’s West Asia Program
Alex Oliver, Director of Research at the Lowy Institute (moderator)
Elaine Pearson, Australia Director, Human Rights Watch
Dr Rebecca Sheehan, Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender and Program Director of Gender Studies at Macquarie University

The Lowy Institute 2018 Media Awards were held on Saturday 24 November at NSW Parliament House. The judges included Lowy Institute Board Member, Mark Ryan, Media Consultant and Former Journalist Amanda Buckley and Former AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty. They discuss the importance of the award and introduce the nominees, including Evan Williams, who won the award for his SBS Dateline episode ‘Myanmar’s Killing Fields’, which documents the mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.

Over the past 15 years, the Lowy Institute has been at the centre of Australia's foreign policy and national security debates and is now internationally recognised for its independent reserach, analyses and publications on world affairs.

On 23 September the Lowy Institute hosted the 2017 Lowy Institute Media Award dinner, where the 2017 Award was won by Matt Brown of the ABC. New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens delivered the keynote speech, addressing the dying art of disagreement.