Sir Colin Lucas

Vice Chancellor Emeritus Sir Colin Lucas is a member of UoPeople’s President’s Council. He was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1997 to 2004 and has recently retired as Warden of Rhodes Trust, the charitable organization responsible for bringing some of the world’s finest scholars to Oxford.

During his seven years as Vice-Chancellor, Sir Colin led the modernization of the University and saw it ranked fifth in the world, outranked only by the four leading US institutions. During his term of office Sir Colin also established and chaired a Working Party on Access, which reported in 1999. In 2001 he became the first non-US trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is also Education Adviser to the State Governor of Guangdong Province, China.

He began his academic career as a Lecturer at the University of Sheffield (1965-69) and the University of Manchester (1970-73). He returned to Oxford in 1973 as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Balliol College, before moving to the University of Chicago as Professor of History in 1990. At Chicago he served as Chairman of the Department of History and then Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences.

In 1994 he became Master of Balliol College, Oxford, a position he held for six years. Sir Colin is a specialist in the history of 18th-century France, principally the French revolution.