Vice-Chancellor
Professor Irene Tracey, CBE, FRS, FMedSci
Professor Irene Tracey, CBE, FRS, FMedSci, became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford on 1 January 2023. She was previously Warden of Merton College, Oxford, her alma mater. She is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences.
Irene did her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Oxford in Biochemistry under the supervision of Professor Sir George Radda. Her research focused on the early use of magnetic resonance imaging methods to study disease mechanisms in humans. She then held a postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School working at the MGH-NMR (now Martinos) imaging centre.
Professor Irene TraceyCredit: John Cairns
In 1997, Irene returned to Oxford and was a founding member of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB – now the world-leading Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging); she was its director for ten years. Irene was tenured in 2001 at what is now the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics with Studentship at Christ Church, where she is an Honorary Fellow. From 2007 until 2019, Irene held the Nuffield Chair in Anaesthetic Sciences with Fellowship at Pembroke College, where she is an Honorary Fellow. From 2015 to 2019 she was also Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences – a 550-person department of scientists and clinicians drawn from neurology, ophthalmology, and anaesthetics. She will continue to teach undergraduate medics about pain and imaging through lectures and the occasional tutorial. Prior to becoming Vice-Chancellor, she returned to her alma mater and became Merton College’s Warden, where she is now an Honorary Fellow.
Alongside senior leadership roles within the University, Irene has served on many national and international committees, such as the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), British Neuroscience Association and Lundbeck Brain Prize Committee. She was on the Council of the Medical Research Council, and has just finished in 2024 being President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS). She is a passionate advocate for women in science and is involved in several mentorship schemes.
Over the past 25 years her multidisciplinary research team has contributed to a better understanding of pain perception, pain relief and nociceptive processing within the injured and non-injured human central nervous system using advanced neuroimaging techniques and novel paradigm designs. They have also been investigating the neural basis of altered states of consciousness induced by anaesthetic agents.
Her work has both discovery and translational elements and has contributed to a fundamental change in how we view pain as an emergent experience not simply related to nociceptive inputs. Irene has successfully supervised over 35 DPhil (PhD) students from a range of basic science and clinical backgrounds, and supervised and mentored many postdoctoral (clinical and basic) fellows.
She has been awarded many honours, such as: triennial Patrick Wall Medal (2008) and FRCA (2009) from Royal College of Anaesthetists; Fellow Academy of Medical Sciences (2015); Feldberg Foundation Prize (2017); British Neuroscience Association’s Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience (2018); Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to Medical Research (2022); Honorary Fellow Physiological Society (2022); Honorary Membership British Pain Society (2023); Fellow of the Royal Society (2023); Honorary Fellow Royal Society of Medicine (2024). You can read the Royal Society citation for Professor Irene Tracey in full here.
Professor Tracey is married to Professor Myles Allen and they have three children.