Professor Karen O'Brien, Vice-Chancellor and Warden

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. She has worked to strengthen Durham’s global reputation, and to support research excellence across all disciplines. As VC she engages extensively in national HE policy including as a member of the Russell Group Board. She has also worked with universities, public sector and industry partners greatly to enhance the role Durham plays in the North East region for economic growth and social mobility.

Before joining Durham, she was for five years a member of the senior team at the University of Oxford where she was Head of the Humanities Division. During that time the Division increased its position near or at the top of the global and national league tables, enjoyed unprecedented research grant success, and secured unprecedented levels of philanthropic gifts to endow scholarships, academic posts and key activities. She was the driving force behind the University’s new, £150m Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. As part of this project she established 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 originally studied at Oxford and at the University of Pennsylvania. 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 European 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.