Anne-Marie Brady

On 8 March 2019, it was reported that Brady had been blocked from submitting evidence to the New Zealand Parliament's justice select committee examining potential foreign influence in the New Zealand elections. The four Labour members of the justice select committee including chairperson Raymond Huo had decided to exclude Brady on "procedural grounds" that her testimony had passed the deadline; Huo had been named as a pro-China influencer in Brady's "Magic Weapons" paper. Their action was criticized by the opposition National Party including electoral reform spokesperson Nick Smith. In response to media coverage and criticism from the National Party, the Labour Party announced that Huo had reversed his earlier decision and extended an invitation for Brady to speak to select committee members.

In December 2018, 303 academics, think-tankers, journalists, human-rights activists, politicians signed an open letter that was published on the Czech academic website Sinopsis condemning the harassment campaign against Brady and urging the New Zealand Government to protect her so she could continue her research

In September 2017, she presented a conference paper Magic Weapons:China's political influence activities under Xi Jinping explaining how China attempts to influence international opinion and using New Zealand, as a case study. Brady's paper argued that the Chinese Government was working with Chinese diaspora community organisations and ethnic Chinese media as part of a united front strategy to advance Chinese political and economic interests in New Zealand. Chinese Communist Party soft power influence in New Zealand included working with diaspora organisations and local media to cultivate relationships with New Zealand business and politicians from the country's two major parties, National and Labour.

In late 2017, she started to become the target of a campaign of intimidation. A number of related properties were burgled, including her university office and home. As of September 2018 progress was being made in the investigation and Interpol were involved. In mid-February 2019, it was reported that the police investigation into the burglary and other incidents was still unresolved.

Anne-Marie Brady completed a Ph.D. at the Australian National University in 2000 with a thesis titled Making the foreign serve China: managing foreigners in the People's Republic of China. She moved to the University of Canterbury in 2001, rising to full professor. She is the executive editor of The Polar Journal, published by Taylor & Francis. She is also a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., a non-resident senior fellow at the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham in the UK, and a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific. She is fluent in Mandarin. In 2019, Brady was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Anne-Marie Sharon Brady (born 1966) is a New Zealand politics researcher and full professor at the University of Canterbury who specialises in Chinese politics and its policies in the polar regions.