Professor Glyn Davis AC

Professor Glyn Davis has been Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Melbourne since January 2005.  In this Chief Executive Officer role, he oversees the educational and administrative affairs of the University.

Professor Davis previously was Vice-Chancellor of Griffith University in Queensland and has also served as Director General of the Queensland Department of the Premier and Cabinet - the most senior public servant in the State of Queensland.

He holds an Arts degree with first-class honours in political science from the University of New South Wales and a PhD from the Australian National University for a thesis exploring political independence of the ABC.
His academic career as a lecturer, researcher and professor in politics and public policy spans forte than 20 years and includes the award of a prestigious Harkness Fellowship to work at the University of California, Berkeley, the Brookings Institution in Washington, and the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard.

Professor Davis has written widely on policy and governance. His most recent publications are a third edition of The Australian Policy Handbook (with Peter Bridgman, 2004), The Future of Australian Governance: Policy Choices (co-edited with Michael Keating, 2000) and Are You Being Served? State, Citizens and Governance (co-edited with Patrick Weller, 2001).
He was Foundation Chair of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) which is headquartered at the University of Melbourne.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Companion in the Order of Australia.

In April 2008, he co-chaired the Australia 2020 Summit which brought together 1000 of Australia’s best and brightest brains to tackle the long-term challenges confronting Australia’s future.

Simon Marginson

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, a post he has held since 2006. He works mostly on higher education policy, universities and globalization, the knowledge economy and creative work, and issues in international education. He has held Australian Research Council project grants continually since 1995 and was designated an ARC Australian Professorial Fellow in 2002. Simon is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. He has published numerous papers and six scholarly books, including The Enterprise University (2000, with Mark Considine) and Prospects of Higher Education (2007). He has recently completed three research-based reports for the OECD including a major study of Globalization and Higher Education, and is active in public debate and in providing policy advice to governments here and abroad on higher education matters. 

In November 2008 it was announced that Simon Marginson had been awarded the University of Melbourne’s Woodward  Medal for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University , for research published in 2003-2007 on higher education and globalization, ‘in recognition of an exceptional contribution to knowledge in the field.’ The Medal is awarded annually for research ‘that is considered to have made the most significant contribution by a member of staff to knowledge in a field of humanities or social sciences’.