Professor Duncan Ivison, FAHA FRSN, is President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester. Duncan completed his BA (hons) in political science and philosophy at McGill University, in Montrèal, Canada, where he grew up, and his MSc and PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

 

He has held positions at the Australian National University, the University of York (UK), the University of Toronto and, for more than twenty years, at the University of Sydney.

 

Duncan has taught and published extensively across political and moral philosophy. He was awarded the 1993 Robert Mackenzie Prize at LSE for his thesis, the 2004 CB Macpherson Prize for the best book in political theory in 2002/3 (awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association) and is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (2007) and the Royal Society of New South Wales (2015). He was Laurance S Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Human Values at Princeton University (2002–3), as well as Visiting Professor, most recently, at the ANU (2023) and Nuffield College, Oxford (2023).

 

During his time at the University of Sydney, Duncan held a series of senior leadership roles, including Head of the School of Humanities (2007–10), Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (2010–2015), and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) (2015–2022). He has also held a wide range of leadership roles across the Australian higher education sector, and has been a regular contributor to major debates about the future of universities, research and innovation, and economic development.

 

Duncan has a particular passion for public engagement and building partnerships between universities, community organizations, industry, and governments. One reason he’s come to Manchester is the extraordinary culture of collaboration across the city and region – and the major role the university plays in it – and the sense that you can do things in Manchester that you can’t do anywhere else in the world.

 

He and his partner, Diana Irving, have two children, Hamish and Isobel.

 

 

The President and Vice-Chancellor acts as the principal academic and administrative officer of the University. In fulfilling these functions, they have overall responsibility for the executive management of the University and for its day-to-day direction. The President and Vice-Chancellor is accountable to the Board of Governors for the exercise of these responsibilities and externally (as the designated ‘accountable officer’) to HEFCE until 31 March 2018, and thereafter to the Office for Students, for the use of the public funds the University receives.

 

The President and Vice-Chancellor exercises primary influence on the development of institutional policy and strategy, the identification and planning of new developments and in shaping its institutional ethos.

 

The President and Vice-Chancellor also serves as an ex officio member of the Board of Governors, though they are not a member of the Board’s Remuneration Committee. They may attend meetings of the Remuneration Committee at the invitation of the Chair of the Committee, provided that they are not present for any matters relating to their own remuneration.