Elena Williams is a higher education consultant and PhD candidate in The ANU College of Asia and The Pacific, researching the impact of student mobility on Australia-Indonesia relations.

Between 2013 – 2017 she served as the Indonesia-based Resident Director for The Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies (ACICIS), and since then has held roles with The University of Melbourne, The Victorian Department of Education and AFS Australia advising on learning abroad in Indonesia.

Elena holds a Masters of Applied Anthropology & Participatory Development from ANU, a BA Honours in Indonesian Studies from the University of Sydney, and a BA Communications and International Studies (Indonesian) from the University of Technology Sydney.

Elena currently serves on the boards of DFAT’s Australia-Indonesia Institute and the ANU Indonesia Institute, and is a panel member for The Australia-Indonesia Youth Exchange Program and The Australia Awards Indonesia’s selection committees.

In 2022 Elena was awarded ANU’s Sir Raymond Firth Research Prize and in 2021 ANU’s Ruth Daroesman Graduate Study Grant in recognition of her research on the Australia-Indonesia relationship.