Dr Doug House is currently Honourary Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. During his academic career, he served as Head of Sociology, Research Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research, and President of the Atlantic Association of Sociologists and Anthropologists. Dr. House holds the degrees of BA (Hons) from Memorial University, MA from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar, and Ph D from McGill University. He is the author of six books, including Against the Tide: Battling for Economic Renewal in Newfoundland and Labrador and The Challenge of Oil: Newfoundland's Quest for Controlled Development, and more than a hundred articles, papers and reports. He is currently doing research on Premiers and development policies in Newfoundland and Labrador since Confederation with Canada in 1949; and, in collaboration with his son, Adrian, is completing a biography of his father, Edgar House, a prominent educator and health administrator.

Dr House is also currently serving as the independent Chair of the Strategic Partnership Council of Newfoundland and Labrador. He has had considerable public service experience. His positions have included Chair of the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment (1985-86), Chair of the Economic Recovery Commission (1989-96), Chair of the Board of Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador Corporation (1989-1993), and provincial Co-Chair of the Task Force on Community Economic Development (1994-95). He has been a key contributor to several influential reports including Building on Our Strengths: The Report of the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment (1986), Community Matters: The New Regional Economic Development in Newfoundland and Labrador (1996) and Our Blueprint for the Future (2003).

From January 2004 until January 2006, Dr House served as Deputy Minister of the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and, from January 2006 to April 2008, as Deputy Minister responsible for provincial development planning within Executive Council.

Dr House is also Principal of Doug House Consultants, a small consulting firm that specializes in public policy, the sociology of the oil and gas industry and regional development.

In his personal life, Doug House has been a well-known athlete in Newfoundland and Labrador. A former St. John's Athlete of the Year, he has been inducted into the Newfoundland and Labrador Sports Hall of Fame, the Newfoundland and Labrador Tennis Hall of Fame and the Newfoundland and Labrador Soccer Hall of Fame.

Doug lives in St. John's with his wife, Jeannie House, a lawyer. They have three children: Vanessa, Matthew and Adrian; and four granddaughters: Olivia, Sadie, Sophie and Maeve.

In 2001, Doug House was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada.