David John Hamill was born on 18 September 1957 and grew up in Ipswich. He served as Member of the Legislative Assembly for the area from 1983 to 2001. A Rhodes Scholar, Hamill attended University of Queensland, where he completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours (1979), and Oxford University, where he completed a Master of Arts. In the early 1980s, Hamill left his academic career to enter state politics and, in 1998, rose to the position of Treasurer in the Peter Beattie Labor Government in Queensland.

The materials in the David Hamill Papers were accumulated by Hamill in the writing of his honours thesis at University of Queensland.