Governor since 2025

Jonathan Mills is the composer of several award-winning operas and works for chamber ensemble and orchestra. His opera Eternity Man was recognised by a Genesis Foundation commission in 2003, and his oratorio Sandakan Threnody won the Prix Italia in 2005. 

His opera Eucalyptus was performed in 2024 at the Perth and Brisbane Festivals, and in Melbourne by Victorian Opera and Opera Australia.

He has been director of various festivals in the Blue Mountains (Sydney), Brisbane, Melbourne and Edinburgh, UK where he was the director of the Edinburgh International Festival between 2007 and 2014. In 2015 he was appointed Artistic Curator of the inaugural Lincoln Center Global Exchange at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York.

In 2012 he founded and was inaugural Director [until 2022] of the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, a UNESCO recognised biennial meeting held in conjunction with Edinburgh’s summer festivals.

He is currently Vice-Chancellor’s Creative Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Creative Adviser to Museums Victoria, Trumbull Fellow and Visiting Professor of Music at Yale University and a Guest Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, UK.

His work has been recognised by awards from the governments of Australia, Britain, France, Poland, and South Korea.