Prof Michael Evans

Michael Evans is Emeritus Professor of Military Studies in the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, Deakin University at the Australian Defence College, Canberra. He also holds international positions as a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington, DC, and as an Honorary Professor in the New Zealand Defence Force Command and Staff College, Trentham.

From 1995-2023, he held senior positions in the Australian Department of Defence including the General Sir Francis Hassett Chair of Military Studies (2013-23), and headship of the Land Warfare Studies Centre, the Australian Army’s research and analysis organisation (2001-06). Professor Evans is an expert in professional military education and for a decade was responsible for the development and delivery of the Australian Defence Force’s short course professional development programs in future warfare (Apollo Course); military strategy (Strategos Course) and operational art (Advanced Military Studies).

Born in Wales, and educated in Rhodesia, England and Australia, Professor Evans holds a BA Hons History (First Class) (Rhodesia), an MA War Studies (King’s College London) and a PhD from The University of Western Australia. He was a Sir Alfred Beit Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and has held Fellowships at the University of York in England, the University of Cape Town, and the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) where he remains an Adjunct Professor. He is member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a member of the editorial board of several leading international journals including, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Defense and Security Analysis and Small Wars and Insurgencies.

Professor Evans’ was a regular officer in the post-civil war Zimbabwe National Army where he worked alongside the British Army in the integration of two rival guerrilla armies into a conventional land force. He was the lead author of the Australian Army’s Land Warfare Doctrine 3-0-1, Counterinsurgency (December 2009); a lead consultant on the Army’s 2014 capstone doctrine, Land Warfare Doctrine 1, The Fundamentals of Land Power (May 2014) and a principal consultant on ADF-P-O, Philosophical Doctrine, Command (2024). He is currently the convener of the Australian Army’s Apex Course in Professional Foundation Studies at the Royal Military College of Australia, Duntroon.

Professor Evans is widely published internationally and is a recipient of essay awards from the United States Naval War College Foundation and the United States Army War College Foundation. His publications include Vincible Ignorance: Reforming Australian Professional Military Education for the Demands of the Twenty-First Century (2023); Civil-Military Relations in Australia: Past, Present and Future, (2021) and The Tyranny of Dissonance: Australia’s Strategic Culture and Way of War, 1901-2005 (2005) and Future Armies, Future Challenges: Land Warfare in the Information Age (2004 (co-editor). His latest work, The Wretched of the Empire: A Novel of Southern Rhodesia, (Shangani Publishing House) is due to be published in early 2026.

Contact e-mail for Michael Evans: shanganipublishing@gmail.com