John Dixon, Vice-Provost (International)

Dr. John Dixon

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Internationalization of Queen's, including agreements, partnerships and liaison with foreign universities and governments, student and faculty international mobility, and services/support for international students

Phone: 613-533-3208
E-mail: John.Dixon@queensu.ca

Profile: 

Dr. John Dixon is the Vice-Provost (International) of Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada. He is also a Professor of Structural Geology in the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering.

Dr. Dixon was born in Montreal. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in geological sciences at McGill University in Montreal (1970) and his MS (1972) and PhD (1974) in structural geology at the University of Connecticut, USA, where he held an NRC postgraduate fellowship. He was a visiting doctoral student at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, in 1973.

Dr. Dixon joined Queen’s University as an Assistant Professor in 1974 and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1979 and Professor in 1986. He has spent sabbatical leaves at Stanford University (California) and the University of Otago (New Zealand).

Dr. Dixon served as Head of the Department of Geological Sciences at Queen’s from 1986 to 1993 and was an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts & Science from 1993 to 2000. He took up his current position of Associate Vice-Principal (Academic & International) in April 2000.

Dr. Dixon’s research involves the study of deformation of rocks in the earth’s crust by the use of scaled physical models that are deformed in a unique 20,000-g centrifuge in the Experimental Tectonics Laboratory at Queen’s.

Dr. Dixon has authored/co-authored about 90 research papers and reports as well as approximately 140 conference presentations.

He has supervised 25 MSc and PhD theses. Five of his graduate students have won the Best Thesis prize that is awarded annually by the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division of the Geological Association of Canada.

Since 1995 Dr. Dixon has been a co-Principal Investigator, together with two faculty members at the University of Calgary, in the multi-disciplinary Fold-Fault Research Project (FRP) which is sponsored by a consortium of about 20 petroleum-industry firms, both Canadian and multi-national. The FRP received an NSERC/Conference Board University-Industry Synergy Award (2000) and an APEGGA Summit Award (2003).