Noëlle Van der Waag-Cowling

UNIDIR Fellow Noëlle Van der Waag-Cowling teaches courses at Stellenbosch University on contemporary low-intensity armed conflict as well as cyber warfare. She is also a Research Fellow at the School for Data and Computational Sciences at SU, where her work for the Mandela Mining Precinct is aimed at integrating security across operational technology and information technology domains. She is the cyber lead at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa (SIGLA) and the co-lead on the GLOBSEC Project led by the Arctic University of Norway, which focuses on North-South perspectives and cooperation on global security challenges.

She is passionate about digital capacity building in Africa and strengthening human security on the Continent. Her work has a strong focus on emerging tech threats and national strategic and response architectures.

Noëlle has served as an expert to the Tana Forum on Security in Africa and as a member of the Group of Global Experts to the International Committee of the Red Cross on the protection of civilians during cyberwarfare. She is the South African head of the SA-Netherlands Cyber Security School and was an affiliate member of the University of Canberra’s National Security Hub between 2020 and 2024.