Chris Duke is Professor and former Director of Community and Regional Partnership at RMIT University in Australia, and part-time Director, Higher Education, at the National Institution of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) in the UK, also Honorary Professor of Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester. 

He has been associated with the work of IMHE for a number of years, and with other educational activity of the OECD, especially CERI.  

His current interests include the engagement of universities with their communities and regions, access and widening participation, managerialism and the management of change in the transition to universal tertiary or higher education.

He was formerly President of the University of Western Sydney Nepean and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick.  He has held chairs in Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning at these universities and at the University of Auckland. 

He has published widely in the fields of adult and continuing education for development, and in policy and management in higher education, including the Open University Press titles The Learning University, The Adult University, and Managing the Learning University.  He is on the Editorial Board of HEMP, and Governing Council member of the Tavistock Institute.   He plays a leading role in developing the recently launched RMIT-University of Stirling Observatory on Place Management, Social Capital and the Learning Region, PASCAL.