Dr Welty is a Lecturer in Political Science in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. She completed her PhD, “Preventing and Countering Salafist Radicalisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in 2022 at the University of Sydney. She received her MA in Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) in 2014. She attended Charles University in Prague to pursue a regional specialization in Balkan and Central European studies. She has a dual BA in History and Political Science from Franklin University Switzerland in 2014. Her Bachelor’s thesis was on “The Legality of Assassination and Targeted Killing in the War on Terror.” 

Laura was previously the Project Coordinator for the Electoral Integrity Project (2018-2019), Survey Administrator for the Global Party Survey (2019), a Postgraduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Sydney (2019), and a research assistant for the Sydney Policy Lab (2022) and an ARC-funded grant ‘The US Alliance in a Time of Strategic Change: Lessons from History and Views from the Nation’ (2023-2024). She is currently the Book Reviews Editor for Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

She has been teaching, lecturing, and course convening at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of Sydney since 2017 and the Australian National University since 2024. The units include international relations, comparative politics, international organizations, security, and public policy. 

At the ANU she is convening POLS1009, POLS2002, and POLS3041 in semester 2 2024. 

Dr Welty's academic research focuses on ethnic and religious conflict, international relations, comparative politics, and public policy. She is particularly interested in the intersection of ethnic and religious identity in conflict, terrorism, and the normative discourse around identity.