Stuart Ward

Stuart Ward is the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies for the 2025-26 academic year. Originally from Queensland (BA, University of Queensland; PhD University of Sydney) he has spent most of his career in Europe, with positions at the European University Institute, King’s College London and University College Dublin. Since 2003 he has been based at the University of Copenhagen, most recently at the Saxo Institute (History, Archaeology, Ethnology and Classics), where he also served as Department Chair from 2018-23. He specializes in modern British imperialism and the global legacies of decolonization, particularly in an Australian context – with two monographs: Australia and the British Embrace (2001) and The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire (co-authored with James Curran, 2010) and a volume for the Oxford History of the British Empire: Australia’s Empire (co-edited with Deryck M. Schreuder, 2008). His most recent work has explored the implications of imperial retrenchment around the world for the social and political cohesion of the United Kingdom – which appeared recently as Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023,  reissued in paperback in August 2025). Stuart has been a visiting scholar at the University of Greenland (2000), the Australian Defence Force Academy (2005), Exeter University (2017), the Australian National University (2018) and Nuffield College Oxford (2023). He just completed a fifteen-year stint as Provost of Denmark’s oldest residential college, Regensen.