Peter McDonald

Peter McDonald is Professor of Demography in the Centre for Health Policy at The University of Melbourne. Prior to this, he was Professor of Demography in the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. He was also President of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) for the years 2010-2013, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

He is frequently consulted on the issue of population futures (causes, consequences and policies) by governments around the world, especially in Australia, Europe and East Asia. In 2008, he was appointed as a Member in the Order of Australia. He is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research.

Prior to his present appointment he was head of research at the Australian Institute of Family Studies for a period of 11 years. He has also worked at the Demographic Institute of the University of Indonesia, at the World Fertility Survey, London and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Throughout his career, he has been actively engaged in the teaching and promotion of demography as a discipline while applying interdisciplinary approaches in his research. He has a PhD degree in Demography from the Australian National University and an Honours degree in Economics Statistics from the University of New South Wales. In 2015, he received the Irene B Taueber Award, the highest award of the Population Association of America, being only the fourth non-American to receive the ward.