Professor David Lowe is the Director of the Alfred Deakin Research Institute, a humanities and social sciences research institute focused on Australia and the world. He is a co-founder of the Australian Policy and History network and a member of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Editorial Advisory Board, advising the Australian Foreign Minister with respect to the Documents on Australian Foreign Policy Series.

David is a historian of international relations and Australia in world affairs. He has published on Australia's involvement in wars, including the Cold War, and on aspects of Australia's overseas policies after the Second World War. He has authored or co-authored four books: Menzies and the Great World Struggle: Australia's Cold War 1948-1954 (UNSW Press, 1999); with Joan Beaumont, Chris Waters and Garry Woodard, Ministers, Mandarins and Diplomats: Australian Foreign Policy Making 1941-1969 (MUP, 2003);  Australian Between Empires: the Life of Percy Spender (Pickering and Chatto, 2010); and, with Tony Joel, Remembering the Cold War (Routledge, 2013)

His expertise on Australia in world affairs has been drawn on by government departments in Canberra. Over the past eight years he has been a commissioned lecturer for the Master of Strategic Studies offered to senior Australian and international military personnel and public servants at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra. In 2009 he was guest lecturer at Keio and Doshisha Universities in Japan, sponsored by the Australia-Japan Foundation.

He is currently researching and writing on: public diplomacy in Australian and international contexts; the uses of history by Australian politicians; and Australian involvement in post-war decolonisation, including the Colombo Plan, and the history and legacies of Australian-government sponsored tertiary scholarships for Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

David joined Deakin University from Cambridge in 1991, and from 1993 to 1995 was Monash Lecturer in Australian Politics at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, University of London.