President's biography

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 Montréal, 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 as 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 you can’t do anywhere else in the world.

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