Prof. John M. MacKenzie
Author and Historian of Empire
John MacKenzie began his schooling in Zambia and is a graduate of the
universities of Glasgow and British Columbia (Vancouver). He spent 34 years
in the history department at Lancaster University where he held the chair of
imperial history. He was also Principal of the County College, the first Dean of
Arts and Humanities, and later Dean of Education.
He holds, or has held, honorary professorships at the Scottish universities of
Aberdeen, St Andrews and Stirling, and an honorary professorial fellowship at
Edinburgh University. He is also Visiting Professor at the University of the
Highlands and Islands (UHI) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In
2021 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Aix-Marseille University,
France. He has taught at the University of British Columbia, Wilfrid Laurier
University(Ontario) and the universities of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and
Liverpool.
John established the Manchester University Press ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series in 1984, which has
become the largest and most significant series in the field of imperial cultural history. He remained its
editor until his retirement in 2012 when the series numbered over 120 volumes.
He has edited a number of journals, including Environment and History (2000-2005), and until recently
was editor in chief of Britain and the World, the journal of the British Scholar Society. He has been on the
editorial board of several others including the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.
He was historical consultant for the ‘David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa’ exhibition
at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Royal Academy, Edinburgh, in 1997; and for the
‘Victorian Vision’ exhibition at the V&A Museum, London, in 2001. He edited and contributed to the
catalogues for both exhibitions, and most recently to the catalogue associated with the Orientalism
exhibition, ‘Inspired by the East: how the Islamic World influenced Western art’, at the British Museum
(2019-20).
John has made a number of television and radio programmes associated with the history of the British
Empire and has also travelled extensively in the Commonwealth territories. He currently lives in
Perthshire, Scotland. In 2023 he published his autobiography, Orientations: A Life at the End of Empire
(Troubador Publishing, Leicester).
