John was appointed Director of the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy & Science in 2022.  The mandate for the Centre is to advance the UNESCO mission for sustainable and equitable development, with particular focus on Sustainable Development Goal 6: 'Ensuring acceess to water and sanitation for all'.  For the five years prior, he was Vice Principal Research, Knowledge Exchange & Wider Impact with overall institutional responsibility for research strategy and excellence in academic performance. 

John is a Professor of Physical Geography, with expertise in the study of environmental change. His systems-based work on the impacts of climate and land use change - manifested by issues like soil erosion, flooding and biodiversity impacts - has a strong policy focus. Current collaborations extend across multiple countries, e.g., Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Zimbabwe and Turkey. His strong national profile is reflected in various recent and current advisory roles, including serving on the Board of Scottish Government’s Centres of Expertise in Climate Change (CXC) and Centre for Research on Water (CREW) and Steering Group for the Hydro Nation Scholars Programme.

John has been at the University of Dundee since 1998. He was Founding Director of the Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR), a strategic and highly successful partnership with the James Hutton Institute, established to tackle interdisciplinary challenges around food, water, energy and health security. He was the inaugural Dean of the multidisciplinary School of Social Sciences created through restructuring in 2015 amalgamating the Schools of Environment, Business, Natural Resources, Psychology and Law.

Research expertise on water resources and different aspects of river basin management including erosion and sedimentation issues, environmental change, governance and ecohydrology.

Global resources, ecosystem services and water resources management