Description
Professor Dennis Austin (1922 – 2019) – In 1959 Professor Austin received a three-year Rockefeller research fellowship, and following this a joint post at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; the University of London subsequently awarded him a readership. In 1967 Dennis Austin joined the Department of Government at the University of Manchester as a professor. He served there and then at the closely linked Institute for Development Policy and Management (now the Global Development Institute) for over thirty years, becoming Pro Vice Chancellor of the University while also having a term as Dean of the then Faculty of Economic and Social Studies. He was a stimulating and authoritative teacher, highly popular among his undergraduate students and the diploma and MA candidates at IDPM – not least with his considerable fund of entertaining stories from a long career. For his fellow members of staff (and especially those at earlier career stages), Dennis could be a wise, older brother, explaining the way in which universities could be unwise and sometimes unfair…but also excellent places to work! Many of the doctoral students who developed under his supervision have gone on to distinguished careers at British, African and West Indian universities
