Ian Duncan

Ian Duncan is the Florence Green Bixby Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where he specializes in Scottish literature, British Romanticism, and the evolution of the novel. He holds a BA from King's College, Cambridge (1977) and a PhD from Yale University (1989), with prior faculty positions at Yale and the University of Oregon before joining Berkeley in 2001.

His research bridges literature, natural sciences, and media studies, focusing on the novel's development alongside evolutionary theory, Scottish cultural identity, and Romantic-era transformations. Key interests include the interplay of biological concepts with narrative form, the historical novel's political dimensions, and literature's relationship to opera and film.

Duncan has authored seminal works such as Scott’s Shadow (2007) and Human Forms (2019), exploring how the novel shaped understandings of human nature during scientific revolutions. He edits major projects including The Cambridge History of Scottish Literature and is writing Scotland and Romanticism.

Honors include:

• Corresponding Fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh
• Honorary Fellow, Association for Scottish Literature
• Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award (2017)
• Saltire Society Research Book of the Year (2008)

He directs critical editions of James Hogg and Walter Scott, co-edits the Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism series, and has held visiting positions at Princeton, LMU Munich, and Aix-Marseille University.