Leah Farrall was a former Research Associate in Counterterrorism at the US Studies Centre and a speaker at the Centre's National Summit in June 2011. From July 2017, Farrall will be a Senior Lecturer in National Security at the National Security College at the Australian National University.

Farrall is a counterterrorism expert who has extensive experience as a policy practictioner in addition to her academic credentials. She is a former Senior Counter Terrorism Intelligence Analyst with the Australian Federal Police. During her time there, she served as the al Qaeda specialist and worked on a range of international and domestic counterterrorism investigations. Farrall co-authored The Arabs at War in Afghanistan (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2014) with Mustafa Hamid, which offers important insights into the history of many of today's militant Salafi groups and movements.