Jacinda Ardern joins University of Sydney as lecturer and mentor

Former New Zealand prime minister will focus on leadership, social cohesion and public health in new role

The former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern will lecture and mentor at the University of Sydney after moving to Australia earlier this year.

Ardern begins this month and her work will focus on empathetic leadership, social cohesion and civic trust. The University of Sydney said Ardern would be based in its school of public health, exploring ways to address global health challenges and focusing on equity, inclusion and wellbeing.

The former prime minister will host guest lectures and masterclasses and will engage in mentoring, but the university said it was not a full-time teaching role.

“I’m delighted to be joining the University of Sydney,” Ardern said. “I’ve found myself especially focused on the question of leadership since leaving office – and how we can better support and encourage the kind of leadership needed to tackle our many global challenges.”

The University of Sydney vice-chancellor, Mark Scott, said he had long admired the courage and humanity Ardern brought to public life.

“Dame Jacinda led New Zealand through events of profound consequence and her leadership demonstrated that empathy and resolve do not compete with one another; each can strengthen the other,” he said.

“For our students, the opportunity to learn from Dame Jacinda is exceptional. They will meet not only a former prime minister, but a thoughtful teacher with a great deal to share about public leadership and service.”

In an ABC Conversations interview in July, Ardern said she believed people were seeking empathetic leadership despite many world leaders embodying a “dominant style” of leadership.

“You see people voting for parties [that] are often on the fringes of the mainstream. When you dive into the research, the majority of those who are doing that are often not voting for the ideology – they’re just voting against the status quo because they don’t think it serves them any more.

“So I think all the signs actually point to people wanting something different than what they’re getting now.”

Ardern retired from politics in January 2023, after more than five years as prime minister and the leader of the Labour party. She led the country through the Christchurch terrorist attack, the Whakaari volcanic eruption and the Covid pandemic.

In 2017, aged 37, Ardern became the world’s youngest-serving female leader, later becoming the second world leader to give birth while in office.

Ardern has since held fellowships at Harvard University focused on public leadership and technology governance, and published her memoir, A Different Kind of Power, in 2025.

Ardern, her husband, Clarke Gayford, and daughter, Neve, moved to Sydney earlier this year, buying a property in Sydney’s northern beaches for $5.3m.