Driven toward diplomacy
Highlights
- ACU graduate Grace Corcoran was the university’s first New Colombo Plan scholar, and is the recipient of the 2026 ACU Alumni Award for Early Career Achievement.
- Grace is Senior Policy and Projects Manager at the Australia India Institute, focusing on Indian Ocean security and Australia’s defence partnerships in the Indo-Pacific.
- She argues the Indian Ocean is crucial to Australia’s security and prosperity, given the large share of the nation’s energy and trade that flows through it.
When Grace Corcoran was growing up in inner suburban Melbourne, family meals came with a side of politics. The dinner table was a place where current affairs were debated, where the news was fair game and opinions were both welcomed and challenged.
“I’ve always been a huge international relations and international security nerd,” says Grace, reflecting on those spirited family discussions. “It’s a passion of mine and something I find so interesting.”
Global politics and diplomacy were not, however, her first career choice. Straight out of high school, she enrolled in a science degree with a plan to become a doctor.
Then came illness, a volunteer role that sparked an interest in human rights, and an eventual change of degree.
By 2017, in the second year of a Bachelor of Applied Public Health/Bachelor of Global Studies at ACU, she had won a coveted scholarship that would take her to a country she knew very little about.
Grace was the first ACU student awarded a New Colombo Plan scholarship, and the first scholar ever sent to the Federated States of Micronesia. Her time in the small Pacific nation was challenging but life-forming. It shaped her future career path in international relations.
Although her six months in Micronesia seems like a lifetime ago, Grace still looks back very fondly on the experience – beautiful culture, diverse nature, dramatic dive sites and all.
Although her six months in Micronesia seems like a lifetime ago, Grace still looks back very fondly on the experience – beautiful culture, diverse nature, dramatic dive sites and all.
Her achievements there led to three further internships: women’s empowerment initiatives in the Maldives, health promotion in Sri Lanka, and human rights in the Philippines.
“The whole experience expanded my view of the world and taught me a lot about myself, the way I viewed the world, and how much I could learn from our neighbours in the region,” says Grace, who in 2023 was named a Young Woman to Watch in International Affairs.
“Living and working in these different places allowed me to see just how important it is for Australia to engage with the region at every level of society, and it also helped me to confirm that international human rights and development were the areas I wanted to pursue.”
Meeting the neighbours
Almost a decade on, Grace’s job relies on understanding others – albeit on a much larger scale.
As a policy specialist and researcher in geopolitics, security and diplomacy, her work is all about strengthening Australia’s engagement with its neighbours in the Indo-Pacific.
She does this at the University of Melbourne as Senior Policy and Projects Manager at the Australia India Institute, focusing on Indian Ocean security, minilateral cooperation, and Australia's defence and security partnerships in the region. She also advises Asialink, Australia’s national centre for Asia-capability.
“The work is broadly about building connections and understanding across the region,” she says. “It’s about increasing Australia's capability to be able to engage, and providing insights or research into the best ways to do that.”
Her analysis has been published by the Lowy Institute, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and the Observer Research Foundation, as well as in mainstream news sites like The Australian.
Most Australians know little about the Indian Ocean and its relevance to the nation – and this a problem, says Grace, because the region is crucial to our security and prosperity.
“A huge percentage of our energy and trade flow through the Indian Ocean, making us completely dependent on the Indian Ocean,” she says.
“If something was to happen there, the impact on Australia would be significant. We need to be investing our time and energy into partnerships in the region to ensure that there’s stability, but also to ensure we have visibility of what’s happening there.”
Australia’s relationship with India is one of its most consequential, she adds, and yet is generally poorly understood by those outside foreign policy circles. The world’s most populous nation also has the fastest-growing major economy, a rapidly growing defence industry, and exponential growth in AI and technology capabilities.
“India sees itself as the net security provider of the Indian Ocean,” says Grace, who has led projects looking at defence and security cooperation between Australia, India and South Korea.
“For Australia, it’s really important that we build relationships so that we don’t miss out on the India opportunity. There are areas that other countries are jumping into that Australia isn’t, simply because some outdated views persist. And we’re going to miss out if we don’t act fast.”
Her work on Indo-Pacific geopolitics has given her rare insight into how Australia is perceived abroad. This insight helps her advise on how we should interact in our region.
Seeing both sides
Grace’s time at ACU took her across the world. Yet one of the most formative experiences happened not abroad but in a classroom in Melbourne.
It was a subject on ethics in international relations. Each week, the lecturer chose a controversial topic and asked the students to argue both sides.
One of those subjects was automated weapons. The argument was raised that while they might kill more people, they spare the human soldier from the act of pulling the trigger.
“I don’t know that I necessarily agreed with half of what the lecturer said,” says Grace, “but it was a really interesting class to have to understand and listen to all sides of a debate, and I think about that class regularly.”
Today, as part of her research on global security and defence, Grace continues to explore the pros and cons of automated weapons. She credits ACU, and the young and diverse academics teaching in the global studies stream, for making her more critical of some of Australia’s relationships and more open to others than many in her field.
“I do think that’s because ACU opened my eyes to these different ways of thinking,” she says.
Which isn’t far from where her interest began: sitting at a table, hearing divergent points of view, and presenting informed opinions that had to survive scrutiny.
“I love international relations,” Grace says. “I find it so interesting to read about international security, to analyse and write about it, and I really enjoy the process of building my own voice.”
Grace Corcoran is the recipient of the 2026 ACU Alumni Award for Early Career Achievement. She graduated from ACU in 2020 with a Bachelor of Applied Public Health/Bachelor of Global Studies, and holds a Master of Development Studies from the University of Melbourne.
Published 2026