Vice Chancellor and President

Meet Professor Nicola Phillips, Adelaide University's new Vice Chancellor and President

Adelaide University Chancellor Pauline Carr with Vice Chancellor and President, Professor Nicola Phillips

Welcome from the Vice Chancellor 

Welcome to Adelaide University – welcome to Tirkangkaku, a Place of Learning. 

A global top 100 university and member of Australia’s Group of Eight, we are dedicated to leading contemporary education and innovation for a better nation and brighter world.  

Our mission is to bring together teaching and research, excellence and equity, and student experience and scale, to deliver greater academic purpose and impact. 

I am honoured to be leading this distinctive institution through its formative years. We are not just a new university but will be a new kind of university, in a new era of higher education, that has been created with purpose and for service, focused on the expansion of opportunity in all of its forms and the role that our university has to play in propelling social, economic and cultural progress. 

Professor Nicola Phillips, Adelaide University's Vice Chancellor and President

Professor Nicola Phillips – Vice Chancellor and President 

Professor Nicola Phillips is the Vice Chancellor and President of Adelaide University, commencing in the role on 12 January 2026. 

An esteemed leader and academic, Professor Phillips has some 30 years of experience in the higher education sector across Australia and the United Kingdom. She completed her undergraduate studies at King’s College London, and holds both a Master’s degree in Comparative Government and a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

A distinguished scholar in global political economy, she held academic and leadership positions at the Universities of Warwick, Manchester, and Sheffield, before returning to King’s College London in 2017 as Vice-President and Vice-Principal (Education). She subsequently moved to the University of Melbourne to take up the role of Provost from September 2021 to July 2025.

Over the course of her career, Professor Phillips has held visiting fellowships and professorships at several leading institutions around the world, including the Australian National University, the University of British Columbia, and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

She is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and a Member of Chief Executive Women.