Born in Scotland, Donald Denoon received a BA (Natal), South Africa and a PhD from Cambridge University. He lectured in history at Makerere University, Uganda and at Ibadan University, Nigeria. He was Professor of History at the University of Papua New Guinea 1972 - 1981 and Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University 1990-2010. He is Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow, Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific Studies.Professor Denoon was general editor of the Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

He has written extensively on Australia’s relations with Pacific countries as well as on Papua New Guinea. His publications include Getting Under the Skin: The Bougainville Copper Agreement and the Creation of the Panguna Mine (with Philippa Mein-Smith and Marivic Wyndham; Melbourne University Press, 2000), A History of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific (Blackwell, 2000), and Public Health in Papua New Guinea: Medical Possibility and Social Constraint, 1884–1984 (with Kathleen Dugan and Leslie Marshall; Cambridge University Press, 1989).