David W. Lovell PhD is a Professor Emeritus in International and Political Studies.

He has been a member of the UNSW since 1983, first at RMC Duntroon, and then at ADFA. During the early 1990s, he edited The Political Theory Newsletter, and was managing editor of the Australian Journal of Political Science. In 1992, he was the Australian Parliamentary Political Science Fellow, and since 1993 he has been a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, and was co-editor of its journal, The European Legacy, until 2017. He was a participant in the China-Australia Joint Seminar on Civil Society in Beijing in 1999, and was a member of the Australian government delegation to the Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity, held in The Hague, May 2001. He is a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP).

He was Head of the School of Politics at UNSW Canberra at ADFA from 2001–2003, Presiding Member of the Research Committee, 2003–2004, Acting Rector in 2004, Deputy Rector (Special Projects) in 2008 and Head of School of Humanities and Social Sciences from 2006-2016. He was Associate Dean (International),2017-2020, and Director of the John Howard Prime Ministerial Library from 2020 until his retirement in mid-2022.