Lynn McAlpine

Lynn McAlpine is a pioneer in the field of doctoral career development. She has worked for nearly 20 years to build and gain recognition for her field, in part by collaborating with other researchers and valuing the work of newcomers to the field. Thanks to her tireless efforts, the need to understand and support doctoral and post-doctoral careers is now recognized worldwide.

Lynn McAlpine holds a D.Ed. from the University of Toronto, a Master's in Education from Concordia University, and a Diploma in Education and a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University. She began at McGill as a postdoctoral fellow in 1986 and became professor emerita in 2008. In 2006, she moved to the University of Oxford, becoming professor emerita there in 2016. 

Her career though began earlier in 1970 as a developer at the Public Service Commission of Canada. Throughout her career, she has maintained a focus on professional learning and career development. She has inspired countless young doctoral researchers, across disciplines, to intentionally pursue their chosen careers and provided them with ways to be successful.

Professor McAlpine, a committed researcher, highly values the power of collaboration. She has been Principal or Co-Investigator on more than 45 research grants. She has also published or co-published over 200 papers, books or book chapters – more than half about doctoral career development that are benchmarks in the field. As an authority with highly sought-after expertise, she receives many invitations to apply her research to university policy and doctoral career practice.   

She received a W.J. McKeachie Career Achievement Award in 2005 from the American Educational Research Association, a Research Award in 2006 from the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education, and was elected a Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education in the United Kingdom in 2012. 

Université Laval awards an Honorary Doctorate in Education Science to Lynn McAlpine for her remarkable contributions to the future of graduate studies, one in which PhD careers are attuned to the issues of today and tomorrow.