Alan Dupont AO

Dr. Alan Dupont AO is CEO of Cognoscenti and one of Australia’s best known strategists, Asianists and thought leaders with an international reputation for his work on geopolitical risk, foreign policy, defence and national security. He has been an advisor to a number of Australian ministers of defence and foreign affairs, as well as to the Nobel laureate and former President of East Timor, Jose Ramos Horta. In 2013/14, Alan established and led the Abbott Government’s Defence White Paper team. He has received commendations for his work from the governments of Japan and East Timor and was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of Australia’s top strategists. He was appointed as an Officer in the Order of Australia in the 2019 Queens Birthday Honours for “distinguished service to the international community through security analysis and strategic policy development.”

In a long and diverse career across government, the private sector and academe, Alan has been an astute observer of many of the seminal developments in Asia’s security environment since the Vietnam War. Following 25 years of service in government as an army officer, defence intelligence analyst and diplomat Alan has distinguished himself as a scholar and academic entrepreneur. He has been involved in five university and think tank start-ups since the late 1990s, including appointments as a Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy; Councillor with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute; the inaugural holder of the Michael Hintze Chair in International Security at the University of Sydney and Director of the Centre for International Security Studies; CEO of the US Studies Centre and, most recently, Professor of International Security at the University of NSW.

Alan has also worked extensively with the business community in Australia and internationally. He established a high end political and strategic risk consultancy in 1995, which he has successfully led for two decades. His corporate clients have included British Aerospace, British Telecom, CORP0L Alliances, Australian Defence Industries, Boeing Australia, ACIL, CASA, Pangea Resources, Tenix, GHD, Northrop Grumman, KPMG, CQS, Shell and Super Investment Management. He has been a keynotespeaker and participant at many business conferences and advisor to a number of companies as well as serving on the boards of CQS, one of Europe’s leading asset managers, Outcomes Australia and the Northern Territory Defence Advisory Board. In government, his companies have consulted to the Department of Defence, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Intelligence Community, AusAID, the National Crime Authority, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Austrade, the Victorian Department of Premier & Cabinet, and overseas to the United States, Indonesia, Brunei and East Timor.

Alan is a much sought after speaker and commentator in Australia and internationally. He is Contributing National Security Editor for The Australian newspaper and frequently comments on defence and security issues for the electronic media, including the ABC, SBS, Sky, CNN, CNBC Asia, the BBC, Voice of America and Reuters. He has been interviewed for most Asian dailies as well as leading newspapers in the US and Europe including the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Le Monde and the Wall Street Journal. The author of nearly 100 books, monographs and articles on defence and international security, his path breaking study of the non-military, transnational challenges to East Asia’s security for Cambridge University Press (East Asia Imperilled) is generally acknowledged to be the authoritative academic work in the field.

Alan holds a PhD in international relations from the Australian National University and is a graduate of the Royal Military College Duntroon and the US Foreign Service Institute.