Professor Glyn Davis AC is the 22nd Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia. Prior to his appointment as Secretary in June 2022, Professor Davis served as Chief Executive Officer of the Paul Ramsay Foundation, Australia's largest charitable foundation with a mission to break the cycle of disadvantage.
From January 2005 to September 2018, Professor Davis served as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of The University of Melbourne and from January 2002 to December 2004, as Vice-Chancellor of Griffith University in Queensland. Until recently he was Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He remains a Visiting Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College. He also holds visiting professorial appointments at King's College London, The University of Manchester and the Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.
Professor Davis is a public policy specialist, with experience in government and higher education, who delivered in 2010 the Boyer Lectures on the theme 'The Republic of Learning'. His community work includes partnering with Indigenous programs in the Goulburn–Murray Valley and Cape York, and service on a range of arts boards, including the Queensland and Melbourne Theatre Companies. In late 2021 he was appointed Chair of Opera Australia.
Professor Davis holds a first-class honours degree in Political Science from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and a PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). In 1988, Professor Davis undertook a post-doctoral appointment as a Harkness Fellow, spending time at the University of California, Berkeley, the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Professor Davis is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and received a Centenary Medal in recognition of his contribution to public service in Australia. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2002 for service to public administration and governance and to education.
His most recent book is On Life's Lottery (Hachette, 2021), an essay on our moral responsibility toward those less well off.