Professor Karen O’Brien joined Durham University as Vice-Chancellor and Warden in January 2022.
As the chief executive, she has overall responsibility for the educational and research mission of England’s third oldest university, reporting to its Council of trustees.
Since joining she has led Durham University through a significant period of strategy renewal, with a focus on key areas of research growth (particularly in the sciences), access and inclusion, financial sustainability, equality and inclusion, and sustainable development goals in both the region and the wider world. As VC she engages extensively in national HE policy including as a member of the Russell Group Board.
Before joining Durham, she was a member of the senior team at the University of Oxford where she was Head of the Humanities Division for five years. She delivered the vision for a new, £150m Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities including a new Institute for the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.
Prior to joining Oxford, she was Vice-Principal for Education at King’s College London, PVC (Education) at the University of Birmingham, and chair of the Russell Group Pro-Vice-Chancellors for Teaching and Learning.
She spent most of her earlier career teaching and publishing research, and held academic posts at the universities of Warwick, Cardiff and Cambridge. She is a former Harkness Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of The English Association, and an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and of St Cross College, Oxford. She has published widely on the literature and intellectual history of the Enlightenment. Her first book won the British Academy’s Rose Mary Crawshay prize. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service and other media networks.