David Runia

Biography

David Runia was born in the Netherlands in 1951 and arrived in Australia in 1956, where he was educated at Newtown State School, the Geelong College, the University of Melbourne and Queen’s College. He returned to the Netherlands in 1977 and completed his doctorate at the Free University, Amsterdam in 1983. He taught at the Free University, Amsterdam, and Utrecht University, before being appointed to the Chair of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Leiden in 1992. He also did research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, at the Humanities Research Centre in Canberra, and in MÜnster, Germany. He returned to Australia in 2002 when he was appointed Master of Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne. He retired from that role at the end of 2016. He was elected Correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, Scaliger Fellow at the University Library Leiden, Netherlands, in 2007 and Overseas Fellow of the Royal Holland Society of Humanities and Sciences in 2013. In 2017 he was appointed Director ad interim of the Institute of Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne.