Professor Megan Davis

Megan Davis AC FASSA FAHA FAAL is the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University and is Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School 2024/2025. 

Professor Davis has been an Acting Commissioner of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court for over a decade. 

In 2025, Megan was appointed to Australia’s highest civilian award, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for eminent service to the law and to social justice, to the national and international advocacy of the rights of Indigenous peoples, and to the community.

Professor Davis is the leading constitutional law on constitutional recognition in Australia and is a renowned constitutional lawyer and public law expert, specialising on Indigenous peoples and the law, the constitutional recognition of First Nations and democracy. Megan also researches and writes on public law matters relating to Indigenous peoples and has published extensively through the UN in her roles as UN expert over twelve years. 

Megan was elected to the Australian Academy of Law (2012), the Australian Academy of Social Sciences (2017) and the Australian Academy of Humanities (2023). 

Megan was one of the architects of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the law reform proposal for ‘Voice, Treaty and Truth’, the amendment for the constitutional amendment for a Voice to Parliament, and the design of the Voice to Parliament aimed at increasing First Nations participation in Australian democracy. Megan designed the First Nations Regional Constitutional Dialogues and the National Constitutional Convention that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Megan was a co-recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize for this work. For this work Prof Davis has also been named on TIME Magazine’s TIME NEXT100 list of the Next Generation of Global leaders, Marie Claire “Powerhouse of the Year” in 2023, Overall Winner of the Australian Financial Review’s Women of Influence/Leadership awards in 2018 and overall winner of the Public Policy category. She was named in the AFR’s Annual Australia’s Top Ten Cultural Power list and named one of  Australia’s top 5 Legal Powerbrokers in 2023 by the Australian Financial Review.

Megan is a UNSW Scientia Professor and holds the Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law at UNSW Sydney and is Pro Vice Chancellor Society UNSW. She has also been appointed a Penn Carey Law Bok Visiting International Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (Penn Carey Law) for 2025-2026.

Aside from academia where she teaches in public law and public international law, Megan spends a lot of her work time in the service of the community particularly on matters of law reform and structural change. From 2022-2023 Davis served on the Prime Minister’s Referendum Working Group, the Prime Minister’s Referendum Engagement Group, and the Attorney General’s Constitutional Expert Group. She was Co-Chair of the Law Council of Australia’s Voice Referendum Working Group. She was a member of the Prime Minister’s Referendum Council (2015-2017), chair of the sub-committee for the design of the Constitutional Dialogues, and a member of the Prime Minister’s Expert Panel on the Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution (2011-2012). She is the Co-Chair of the Uluru Dialogue – the group of First Nations leaders who led the Uluru Statement from the Heart work. And is an architect of the Australian Truth-telling database: Towards Truth which won the ‘Innovation’ award at the 2024 Australian Web Awards.

Professor Davis is on the Indigenous Legal Issues Committee of the Law Council of Australia. She has led two inquiries including as a Commissioner for the QLD Commission of Inquiry, Commissions of Inquiry Act 1950 (Qld), inquiry into the treatment of young people detained in Queensland’s youth detention centres in 2016 alongside Kathryn McMillan KC. Many of their inquiry recommendations have been implemented by the Qld government. Professor Davis was also the Chair and author of ‘Family is Culture’, an inquiry into NSW Aboriginal Children in Out of Home care (2017-2019). Many of the recommendations in her Family is Culture report are being implemented by the NSW government.

Megan is a globally recognised expert in Indigenous peoples’ legal rights elected by the UN Economic and Social Council twice as an expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2011-2016). Professor Davis was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous peoples twice (2017-2022). Professor Davis took part in the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 1999-2005 including as legal counsel to ATSIC.

She is actively involved in sports governance and sports administration in Australia for the National Rugby League. Megan is a Commissioner on the Australian Rugby League Commission, a director on the North Qld Cowboys Community Foundation Board, a Commissioner for South Australian Rugby League and formerly director on the Western Australia Rugby League Commission.

Additionally, she is a Sydney Peace Prize Laureate for the Ulu?u Statement from the Heart, and was awarded a 2024 PeaceWomen Award by the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF).