Professor Tim Dunne was elected a Fellow of the Academy in autumn 2025. He is currently Provost and Senior Vice-President at the University of Surrey.
Professor Tim DunneFAcSS
Tim has more than 30 years’ experience as an educator, and his role as Provost gives him oversight and a shared responsibility for the academic areas at Surrey.
Tim is recognised for his research on human rights protection and foreign policymaking in a changing world order. He has written and co-edited 17 books, including Human Rights in Global Politics (1999), Worlds in Collision (2002), Terror in our Time (2012), The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect (2016), the prize-winning collection The Globalization of International Society (2017), co-edited a re-issue of a classic text by Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight called Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (2019), and most recently, The Rise of the International (2024). Along with remaining active in writing and publishing, Tim also takes graduate classes on humanitarianism and intervention.
During his academic career, Tim has co-edited both the Review of International Studies and the European Journal of International Relations. He has also co-edited two of the biggest selling textbooks in international relations both published by Oxford University Press across multiple editions: Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases and International Relations Theories.
Prior to his move to Surrey, Tim had a number of leadership roles at The University of Queensland (UQ), including Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Deputy Provost. He previously held discipline and Faculty-level leadership roles at the University of Exeter and Aberystwyth University. His graduate training was at the University of Oxford where he won a national prize for his PhD.
Tim also publishes occasional commentaries on Higher Education in Times Higher Education, and posts blogs and regular news items on his LinkedIn page. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia and holds an Emeritus Professorship at The University of Queensland.
Why do the social sciences matter?
The social sciences must remain relevant to solving some of the biggest challenges of our time, but relevance isn’t something we can take for granted. Our disciplinary areas now stand at a critical juncture. One path leads toward declining relevance, perhaps because some of the issues we consider central to our disciplines, such as methodological debates, can appear quite niche to the outside world.
However, demonstrating the critical importance of our expertise in addressing the grand challenges of our era is vital to ensuring the social sciences remain relevant in all sorts of arenas. This means not simply ensuring that economics, politics, sociology, law, and other social science disciplines, have seats at the table, but finding genuinely effective ways to collaborate further with the physical and life sciences. We’ll know we’ve succeeded when a UK Government declares that the UK has become a social science superpower!
What inspires you about your work?
While it might sound clichéd, I genuinely believe it’s an honour to be an academic. I’ve been fortunate to pursue the research questions that fascinate me, learn from giants in international relations, and collaborate with brilliant co-authors on meaningful projects. Having a career that allows you to ask, “how does the world hang together?” and getting paid to seek answers is both unique and deeply privileged.
Beyond curiosity, I find inspiration in the dynamic, contingent, and contested nature of the social world itself. Unlike atoms, which remain predictable under observation, people can change direction entirely — and that makes our work endlessly compelling.
What is the most important issue for social science to tackle?
The challenges are numerous; here are some of the most significant in my view: building resilient communities, ending destructive conflicts, developing AI systems that serve the public good, transitioning to low-carbon economies, eradicating poverty with the same determination we once applied to smallpox, re-setting the responsibilities of sovereign states to be inclusive to all, and feeding the world without destroying the planet.
What does being a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences mean to you?
Agencies like the Academy of Social Sciences provide Fellows with vital platforms to demonstrate the relevance of the social sciences, not just within academic circles, but in public discourse where these conversations matter most. Fellowships are a privilege and responsibility: the privilege of contributing to a community of scholars tackling society’s most pressing questions, and the responsibility to ensure our insights and solutions reach beyond the university and inform policy, challenge assumptions, and shape public understanding. Being elected as a Fellow means joining those who are on the path which not only strives to understand the complexity of the social world but who also want to change it for the better. I am proud to be part of the Academy’s mission to champion and advocate for the social sciences and the immense value they provide in shaping a better future.