After undergraduate study at Trinity College, Dublin and postgraduate research at St John's College, Cambridge in the 1970s, Duncan F. Kennedy was Lecturer in Latin at the University of Liverpool from 1979 before moving to the University of Bristol in 1988, rising to a personal Chair in 2004. He held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship 2007-2009 and retired in 2012. Professor Kennedy's research concentrated on theoretical approaches to Latin literature and its reception and since retirement his focus has shifted to the study of early Greek intellectual culture. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Dublin in 2023.