Alasdair Foster is a writer, researcher and award-winning curator who works worldwide, especially in Asia and Latin America. He has twenty years’ experience heading national arts institutions in Europe and Australia and over thirty-five years of working in the public cultural sector.

He was the founding director of Fotofeis, the award-winning international biennale of photo-based art in Scotland, the largest photo-art event in Europe in the 1990s. From 1998 to 2011, he was director of the Australian Centre for Photography, greatly extending its international profile, increasing six-fold participation in its learning programs, and developing innovative approaches to community engagement. He has also served as editor of Photofile magazine (1998–2009), president of the Contemporary Art Organisations of Australia (2002–06), and chair of the Conference for European Photographers (1997).

Latterly, he was Professor of Culture in Community Wellbeing in the School of Public Health at The University of Queensland, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Art of RMIT University, Melbourne, until he retired in 2022. He has a BSc in physics (University of Edinburgh), and a PhD in participatory culture and the democratisation of twenty-first-century arts policy (Monash University, Melbourne). A polymath, he has worked as an artist, academic, curator, writer, editor, researcher, policy advisor and commercial photographer, integrating each experience into an expansive world view.