The founder and CEO of the Cognoscenti Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy, Dr Alan Dupont is one of Australia’s best-known strategists, Asianists and thought leaders.

He has an international reputation for his expertise on defence and national security and has worked extensively at the interface of security, politics, business and technology. Alan has held many advisory and board positions in government and the corporate sector. He has advised several Australian ministers of defence and foreign affairs and in 2013/14 he established and led the Government’s Defence White Paper team. Alan has received commendations for his work from the Foreign Minister of Japan and the President of Timor-Leste and was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of Australia’s leading strategists. In 2019, he was made an Officer in the Order of Australia for “distinguished service to the international community through security analysis and strategic policy development.”

In the university sector, Alan has been a prominent academic entrepreneur, teacher and scholar. He held joint professorial appointments in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Business School at the University of NSW from 2012-16. Prior to that (2006-12) he was the inaugural holder of the Michael Hintze Chair in International Security at the University of Sydney, the start-up Director of the Centre for International Security Studies and the first CEO of the United States Studies Centre. The author of nearly 100 books, monographs and articles on defence and international security, Alan’s 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 is also Contributing National Security Editor for The Australian newspaper and frequently comments on defence and security issues for the media. 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. He 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. Alan is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of NSW and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington and the Lowy Institute in Sydney.