About Sylvia

Sylvia Laksmi, an Indonesian national, is a renowned subject matter expert in the field of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. Since 2007, she has worked as a senior intelligence analyst in the Indonesian Financial Intelligence Unit in the specialised area of financial crimes intelligence investigations. Sylvia is currently a PhD candidate at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University, examining Indonesian counterterrorist financing policies and their impact on terrorist operations in Southeast Asia and the Asia–Pacific.

Apart from her research work, she is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security at Charles Sturt University (CSU), and also an established trainer who has provided training to government officers and the private sector specialists domestically as well as at the international level. Currently, she is the primary investigator in a research project on Southeast Asian security funded with a grant from the Australian Army Research Centre.

She holds a Bachelor of Political Sciences, which included a thesis on the Abu Sayyaf Group, from University Padjadjaran (Indonesia), and an MSc focused on terrorist financing study from the University of Indonesia. Sylvia’s research has mainly focused on terrorism, terrorist financing, women and terrorist financing, and violent extremism in Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific. Given her considerable depth and credibility, Sylvia has been called upon to assist the Philippines government in a project for Peace Youth Communities to generate counter-narratives against IS-inspired groups and the Communist Party.