Saxo Professor awarded distinguished visiting Chair at Harvard
Professor Stuart Ward will visit Harvard University’s History Department as the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies for the 2025-2026 academic year.
As a leading historian of 19th and 20th century empire, specializing in the changing civic dynamics of settler-colonial societies, Stuart Ward will offer courses in Australian history refracted through a global lens.
Stuart Ward brings a wealth of experience studying Australia from the outside in, having taught at three Australian Studies Centres abroad – in London, Dublin and Copenhagen. The prospect of engaging with students and colleagues at Harvard presents a rare opportunity to further his commitment to merging Australian Studies with wider research agendas.
- I could not be more honoured or excited to have this opportunity to work alongside some of the world’s leading historians, exploring the intricate historical connections between Australia and the United States
The Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies was established in 1976 to mark the United States’ Bicentennial celebrations. Over the years, the Chair has been occupied by some of Australia’s best-known scholars, including Manning Clark, D. J. Mulvaney, Marilyn Lake, Mick Dodson, Tim Flannery, Jill Roe, Tim Rowse and Alison Bashford. Stuart Ward’s appointment will coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Chair.
About Professor Stuart Ward
Stuart Ward is professor of imperial and global history at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, best known for his wide-ranging explorations of the end of the empire. In addition to his work on Australia, he has also explored the social and political repercussions of imperial retrenchment across a broad front – from Africa, to South Asia, the Caribbean and post-war Britain itself. He recently published Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (2023).
Educated at the University of Queensland (BA hons) and the University of Sydney (PhD), he has been based in Europe for much of his career working at leading universities in Italy, the UK, Ireland and Denmark. Since 2003 he has been based at the University of Copenhagen, where he raised funds to establish a Centre for Australian Studies over a ten-year period (2005-15). In 2018 he was appointed to a recently completed five-year term as Head of the Saxo Institute, and he also serves as Provost of Denmark’s oldest residential college ‘Regensen’, where he has lived with his family for the past fifteen years.