Academy Fellow

Stuart Ward is professor of imperial and global history at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, specializing in imperial and global history. He is also an Honorary Professor of History in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University.

His work has explored the modern history of colonial empires, particularly the unravelling of the European colonial order in the twentieth century. He has engaged with multiple colonial contexts, from Africa to South Asia, Canada, the Caribbean and especially Australia, where he has published two monographs on the impact of global decolonization on Australian public life (one of which was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for History). These studies are noteworthy, not only for foregrounding the end of empire as a major political, economic and psychological watershed, but also for highlighting the intractable identity politics that are the British empire’s enduring legacy in Australia.

His work also explores the social and political repercussions of imperial retrenchment abroad for the contemporary United Kingdom - most recently in Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (2023). It is the first major study to address the complex interface between the fraying constitutional ties of the United Kingdom and the wider eclipse of a British world. Radically reconfiguring the ‘break-up of Britain’ as a problem of global history, the book traces a wider arc of historical actors and agencies around the world that, over time, punctured confidence in the shared certainties of being British. It has been widely debated and reviewed, described variously as ‘superbly stimulating’ (The Guardian); a ‘rare treasure-trove’ (The Scotsman); ‘an invigorating worldwide journey’ (Times Literary Supplement) and ‘the work of a master historian’ (The Australian). It has also featured in ‘round table’ debates in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (November 2023) and H-Diplo (2025) and was selected among the ‘books of the year for 2023’ by Australian Book Review for its ‘unmatched intellectual verve, geographical span, and the quality of its historical analysis’. For his contribution to the history of UK separatist politics, he was the awarded the Royal Historical Society’s ‘David Berry Prize’ for Scottish History.

He is also widely cited for his work on the end of empires more broadly, particularly the languages of imperial decline and conceptual history of decolonization. His current work considers the entanglements of imperial rhetoric with the onset of “steam globalization” in the mid-nineteenth century, raising questions about how and why “empire” became the dominant linguistic register for comprehending the deeper structures, patterns and networks of global integration. Applying the perspectives of ‘micro-global history’, he is completing a book on one of the first individuals to circumnavigate the globe ‘under his own steam’ in the 1860s, at a time when the competing languages of empire, race, nation and globe were in frenetic flux.

2026-: Professor of Imperial and Global History, Univeristy of Copenhagen

2026-: Honorary Professor, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

2025-26: Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies, Harvard University

2018-23: Head of the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen

2010-25: Provost of Regensen (Denmark’s oldest university hall of residence)

2010-17: Professor of British Imperial History University of Copenhagen

2008-09: Keith Cameron Chair of Australian History, University College Dublin

2003-08. Associate Professor, British imperial and post-imperial history, University of Copenhagen 

2001-02: Lecturer in History, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London 

1997-2000: Assistant Professor, post-colonial history, University of Southern Denmark

1994-97: Australian Postgraduate Research Award holder (PhD fellowship) University of Sydney

1991-94: Research Associate, European University Institute, Florence

2023: Knight’s Cross, Order of Dannebrog (awarded by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark).

2023: Elected to the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters.

2024: Carlsberg Foundation Monograph Fellowship.

2023: Academic Fellow, Nuffield College Oxford.

2021: Smuts Visiting Research Fellowship, University of Cambridge (declined due to COVID19).

2018: Visiting Research Fellow, Australian National University.

2017: Visiting International Academic Fellow, University of Exeter.

2007: Menzies Foundation Fellowship, King’s College London.

2005: Visiting Research Fellowship, Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales.

2000: Denmark-Greenland teaching fellowship, Nuuk. 

1.     Ward, Stuart (2023) Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, reissued in paperback in 2025).

2.     Ward, Stuart with Astrid Rasch (eds) (2019), Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain (London, Bloomsbury).

3.     Ward, Stuart (2026) ‘Ukania Perpetua and the Anomaly of Empire’, Modern British History, 37:1.

4.     Ward, Stuart (2016) ‘The European Provenance of Decolonisation’, Past and Present, no 230 (Feb).

Ward, Stuart (2024) ‘No End of a Reckoning’ in Alan Lester (ed.) The Truth about Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism (London, Hurst).