He is on the Board of Directors of Education Adelaide, and Community for Global Communication Inc, and is an Honorary Auditor with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).  He has chaired both the Universities Australia Deputy Vice-Chancellors (International) Committee (2004-06, 2008) and the Innovative Research Universities Australia International Committee (2004-2009 ).

From 1992 to 1997 he was Head of the School of Geography, Population and Environmental Management at Flinders.  His previous appointments were at the University of Papua New Guinea, Monash University, and the Research School of Pacific Studies, at The Australian National University.

He has worked for AusAID and the Australian Institute of Urban Studies, and has been a consultant to the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Population Fund, International Labour Organization and AusAID, as well as working with government agencies and research institutes in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Singapore and Malaysia.

Dean's current research is on the linkages between cities and universities in the new global knowledge economy. He was also a chief investigator for a project on strengthening urban slum upgrading and urban governance in Southeast Asian cities, which received Australian Research Council funding for 2005-2008. Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience (Routledge), of which he is a co-editor, will be published by Routledge in June 2011.

He is on the editorial boards of Asian Pacific Viewpoint and the International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development. In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

A graduate of Flinders University, Dean Forbes completed an MA at the University of Papua New Guinea and a PhD at Monash University.”