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 held honorary professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews
and Stirling, and an honorary professorial fellowship at Edinburgh. He was
also Visiting Professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands and a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2021 he was awarded an
honorary doctorate by Aix-Marseille University in recognition of his
pioneering research and its influence on the writing of French imperial
history. He taught at the University of British Columbia, Wilfrid Laurier
University 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. By 2026 it had grown to more than 200.
He edited a number of journals, including Environment and History (2000-2005), and was editor in chief of
Britain and the World, the journal of the British Scholar Society. He was on the editorial board of several
other journals 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 latterly 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 made a number of television and radio programmes associated with the history of the British Empire
and also travelled extensively in the Commonwealth territories. In retirement he lived in Perthshire, Scotland.
In 2023 he published his autobiography, Orientations: A Life at the End of Empire (Troubador Publishing,
Leicester).
