Dr Michael Fullilove AM is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute.
Over the past two and a half decades, Dr Fullilove has played a leading role in the establishment and development of the Lowy Institute. He wrote the Institute’s feasibility study for Sir Frank Lowy in 2002 and served as the Director of its Global Issues Program from 2003 until his appointment as Executive Director in 2012. He has also worked as a lawyer, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and an adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating.
Dr Fullilove writes widely on Australian foreign policy, US foreign policy and global issues in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Australian press. He is a sought-after speaker and commentator who is quoted regularly in publications such as The Economist and appears on broadcasters such as the ABC, the BBC and CNN. He graduated in arts and law from the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales, with dual university medals. He also studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he completed a master’s degree and a doctorate in international relations.
Dr Fullilove is the author of several books, including Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (Penguin), which won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Henry Kissinger described Rendezvous with Destiny as “a fascinating and well-written account of a little-known chapter that was crucial to the course of World War II and to America’s global leadership.” Dr Fullilove is the editor of Men and Women of Australia! Our Greatest Modern Speeches (Viking), and the co-editor of Reports from a Turbulent Decade (Viking), an anthology of the Lowy Institute’s best work. In 2015 he delivered the Boyer Lectures. His lectures were published as A Larger Australia: The ABC 2015 Boyer Lectures (Penguin). Dr Fullilove's forthcoming book is on the relationship between John F. Kennedy and his speechwriter and confidant Ted Sorensen.
Dr Fullilove has hosted many world leaders at the Lowy Institute, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Joe Biden, Angela Merkel, Mark Carney, Aung San Suu Kyi, Lee Hsien Loong, Boris Johnson, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sanna Marin and Jake Sullivan, as well as nine Australian prime ministers.
In 2019 Dr Fullilove was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to international relations.
