The Hunt Lab delivers professional development training in analytic thinking, reasoning, and decision-making for government, industry, and other organisations.
Our courses are grounded in ongoing research at the Lab into how individuals and groups reason well under uncertainty, and are designed for professionals who produce, review, or rely on written analysis in their work.
Courses can be delivered as scheduled offerings or fully tailored to your organisation. Tailoring extends beyond adapting examples; we can combine modules from different courses into a single bespoke programme, adjust depth and duration, and build exercises around your team's own work.
For more information on any of the courses below.
Analytic Rigour
Analytic rigour is critical to producing analysis that is logically sound, well-supported, and able to withstand close scrutiny. Developed in partnership with the Defence Science Institute and domain experts from the Australian Intelligence Community, this course introduces the Reasoning Stress Test (RST), a structured method for evaluating reasoning, identifying critical flaws, and providing precise, actionable feedback. It is particularly valuable for those responsible for reviewing, peer-evaluating, or moderating the work of others.
Argument Mapping
Professional work routinely requires presenting written arguments in risk assessments, policy proposals, legal opinions, scientific papers, and briefs. Yet the reasoning in these documents is often hard to follow. This course introduces the CASE method (Contention, Argument, Evidence, Source): structured visual diagrams that make the logic of reasoning explicit, expose gaps and hidden assumptions, and support a shared language for evaluating reasoning within teams. Participants practise on examples drawn from their own organisation's written work.
Forecasting, Estimation and Red Teaming
Many professional roles require judgement under uncertainty, where information is incomplete and decision-makers need more than vague impressions. This course strengthens analytic judgement through forecasting, estimation, and red teaming. Participants learn to make and assess probabilistic predictions, use base rates and reference classes, apply calibration techniques, and challenge assumptions through structured adversarial analysis. Common cognitive pitfalls and how to mitigate them are covered throughout.
Introduction to Strategic Analysis
This course introduces the core concepts and techniques needed to reason rigorously about complex strategic situations. Modules cover Calibrated Confidence, Estimation and Forecasting, Hypothesis Trees, Comparing Hypotheses (including approximating an adversary's strategic calculus while avoiding mirror-imaging), and Linchpin Analysis, a backcasting approach that identifies the critical variables and events that must occur for a future scenario to materialise. The course concludes with a consolidation exercise applying the techniques to a real or sanitised scenario from the participants' work.
Recognising and Managing Disinformation
Disinformation, misinformation, and malign influence (DMMI) are increasingly global problems, affecting elections, public health, scientific consensus, and trust in institutions. Delivered with the University of Melbourne School of Professional and Continuing Education (MSPACE), this Melbourne MicroCert provides a deeper understanding of how DMMI campaigns operate and the practical skills needed to recognise, assess, and build resilience to them. Drawing on case studies including Russian information operations, COVID-19, climate change, the invasion of Ukraine, and campaigns in the Indo-Pacific, participants explore disinformation as a historical and global phenomenon. Successful completion is recognised with a digital badge from the University of Melbourne; shorter workshops and tailored organisational deliveries are also available.
Deploying and Neutralising Deception
Adversarial deception is a central challenge in intelligence analysis, and a meaningful concern in negotiation, due diligence, investigative work, and cybersecurity. This course examines how deception is constructed, deployed, identified, and countered. Participants explore the psychology of deception, analyse how it operates in practice through storytelling, misdirection, and the simulation or concealment of evidence, and apply structured techniques for detection. Historical case studies of effective operations are worked through in detail.