Howard Duncan

Executive Head, Metropolis Canada

Howard Duncan received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1981 from the University of Western Ontario where he studied the history and philosophy of science. In 1987, Dr. Duncan entered the field of consulting in strategic planning, policy development and program evaluation. In 1989 he joined the Department of Health and Welfare in Ottawa where he worked in program evaluation, strategic planning, policy, and extramural research.

In 1997, Howard joined the Metropolis Project at Citizenship and Immigration Canada as its International Project Director, and became its Executive Head and chair of the Metropolis International Steering Committee in 2002. He has concentrated on increasing the geographic reach of Metropolis, enlarging the range of the issues it confronts, and increasing its benefits to the international migration policy community by creating opportunities for direct and frank exchanges between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Recent of his projects have included the creation of the Metropolis North America and Metropolis Asia initiatives and the creation of a tri-partite Metropolis Secretariat in Asia (Seoul, Manila, and Beijing) to supplement the Secretariats in Ottawa and Amsterdam. In 2012, he moved the Ottawa Secretariat operations from the Government of Canada to Carleton University in Ottawa. He was named Editor of the IOM’s journal, International Migration, in 2015 and is a member of the Advisory Council of the Century Initiative. Howard is a frequent speaker on the management of migration and integration. His most recent research has been on the role of cities in migration management about which he has written for the IOM, including for their 2018 World Migration Report.