When new leaders arrive at the world’s top universities, they often come with pedigrees in medical research. Oxford’s Irene Tracey is a professor of anaesthetic neuroscience. Cambridge’s Deborah Prentice is an eminent psychologist. MIT’s Sally Kornbluth is a cell biologist.

In Emma Johnston, the��University of Melbourne��has a leader who has just been named��Marie Claire���������������Ա�’s��.

While Johnston does not know how many of her fellow vice-chancellors are marine scientists, she believes her discipline offers a metaphorical framework to confront the “external shocks” imperilling her institution and sector – not to mention the future employability of graduates.

“I’ve spent my life studying human impacts in marine ecosystems,” she said. “The two things that really characterise resilience are the ability to resist stresses – or exogenous disturbances, as the economists call them – and to adapt. It’s going to be increasingly important for our graduates to come out of their degrees not only with their deep disciplinary skills, but an ability to use decision science and to be agile in their thinking and do scenario planning – all the sorts of things that make you able to resist and adapt to external drivers of change.”

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From an ecosystem perspective, resilience relies on two characteristics: biodiversity and connectivity. The more species there are, and the more connections there are between those species, the more they can resist and adapt.

“If we are a diverse community of students and staff, and we engage really strongly with each other but also with our communities – local communities, business, governments – that helps build resilience,” Johnston said. “I’m thinking ‘diversity, connectivity, resilience’ as a theme for the��University of Melbourne. How do we grow into that?”

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Johnston presented the idea in a speech to 150 senior colleagues at the university’s leadership retreat in the week following the beginning of her tenure as Melbourne vice-chancellor on 10 February: “It seemed to go down well. The economists really got it. Some of the engineers really got it. There were two ecologists in the room…and they loved it. I’m not sure I got across to everybody, but it’s a work in progress.”

Universities are also a work in progress, despite their ancient roots. “The��University of Melbourne��is the second oldest in Australia [and] one of the oldest in the southern hemisphere. We’re strong. The question is, how quickly can we adapt?” she asks.

“We want to hold on to our democratic, consultative way of working. That’s a good thing. But we have to make sure it’s agile and fast, because we’re going to be hit with lots more changes coming from the outside.”

Johnston worries that the sector is too inclined towards resistance rather than adaptation, and this hampers the reform of sometimes overly bureaucratic mechanisms. Universities “get in our own way” with “lengthy processes”, which mean that establishing new degrees, for instance, can take a year or two. Why not move more quickly? Why not convene the academic board more than once a month, if necessary?

“There are…simple questions about efficiency of governance and management,” she said. “In this day and age, we should be able to move those processes forward with the same quality and governance standards.”

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Reinhard Dirscher/Getty Images

Scenario planning and decision science processes also need to be “mainstreamed” so that “when the shock comes in…[we have] thought through what would we do as an institution”, Johnston believes.

Students have an active role to play in all this. For example, they could accept internships or voluntary placements in incident response teams dealing with climate-related disasters. “[They can] learn more about those processes [and] be ready…to lean in and support their communities when something does happen.”

But how do universities handle rapid-fire external pressures – demands for immediate responses to accusations of��antisemitism on campus, for instance – while maintaining the contemplative practices that help keep them from veering off course?

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“It’s a really good question, but I don’t think it’s a difficult answer,” Johnston said. “If you are…clear on your values and the principles by which you put those values into action, then you’ve got 80 per cent of the way there. The rest is fine-tuning to the specific issue at hand.”

�ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s , launched last August, was five years in the making. It necessitated an acknowledgement that racism existed on campus, “and that the history of the university had some role in that”. A “big truth-telling process” included��last year’s book, published by Melbourne University Publishing, exploring the university’s dark past of infamies, such as grave-robbing and eugenics.

“Any racism on campus is…abhorrent,” Johnston said. “These are values and principles that we have, no matter what. [If] we can recognise it earlier and ensure a rapid response, we get closer and closer to that beautiful, respectful campus where everyone can have the right to freedom of expression because they feel able to bring their whole self to campus.”

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Australian Associated Press/Alamy

Johnston’s personal history with the university is brighter. “I’m back where I studied,” she said. “It’s very nostalgic. The sports clubs are overflowing. The pool is overflowing. The campus looks beautiful.”

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But her first weeks in the top job have not all been smooth sailing. Her move to��ban indoor or “unreasonably” disruptive protests��aroused the ire of the staff and student unions, who said challenging ideas and authority was “baked into” �ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s DNA.

“The right to peaceful assembly is not subject to whether it unreasonably disrupts,” the unions said in a joint statement. Student association president Joshua Stagg accused Johnston of taking an “authoritarian” approach. “The way forward must be undertaken in consultation with students and with respect to their elected representatives.”

Johnston herself was �ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s student union president three decades ago and she met union representatives in her first week back, including its international students’ arm. She also met the Jewish Students Society and the Graduate Student Association. The meetings, which predated the indoor protest ban, highlighted the “critical impact of the cost-of-living crisis”, she said.

“Students are [having to] make a decision about whether to put food on the table or…pay the transport costs of getting to campus. Jobs are plentiful, so they really are working quite a lot, but…it’s having a negative effect on their education. Food insecurity has been something that we’ve heard a lot about.”

A canteen����on �ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s Parkville campus serves A$5 (£2.50) meals from breakfast to dinner – though Johnston “can’t take credit”: the project,��co-designed with students, was developed over the past year.

Student hunger sits uneasily with �ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s stereotypical image as a magnet for well-heeled graduates of plush private schools.��The Age��newspaper����that 64 per cent of �ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s students were from independent and Catholic schools – the highest share of any university in Victoria – notwithstanding its scholarships for about 1,000 students from disadvantaged backgrounds. “We’re focused on diversifying our student cohorts,” Johnston said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

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Peter Casamento/University of Melbourne

Gender equity is another longstanding focus for �ѱ�����dzܰ��Ա�’s first female vice-chancellor. After all, the institution took 172 years to appoint a woman to its top job. “That tells you something,” Johnston says. “Higher education, like many of the large industry sectors, has struggled to create the systems, structures and processes to allow women to get into the top-level executive roles.”

Johnston is one of just nine female leaders of the top 40 institutions (23 per cent) in��̽����Ƶ’s World University Rankings – and one of 55 in the top 200 (27 per cent). On the other hand, women head three of the top five universities and would be running four of them if Harvard’s��Claudine Gay��had not departed following the fiery congressional hearing on the handling of alleged antisemitism that also led to the resignation of the��University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill (MIT’s Kornbluth saw off efforts to remove her, too).

Moreover, steady progress is being made: 27 per cent represents the seventh consecutive annual record, and Australia’s prestigious Group of Eight universities have gone from having just one female leader in 2016 to having four now. “I think that’s progress [but] there are…still structural problems in the system,” Johnston says.

On the other hand, the early-career female researchers with whom she had lunch on International Women’s Day are “facing some of the same problems I had when I started 30 years ago – and I was the only woman in a school of 30 academics. It’s not been uncommon for me to be the only woman in the room. Out of my whole career, I’ve only had a female boss for a year and a half. This is not an unusual story. The sector has still got a lot of work to do.”

At student level, female participation is actually declining in many STEM areas, Johnston said, particularly in physics, engineering and computer sciences – though male student numbers are also down in physics, reflecting the cost of such programmes.

Affordability of provision is one of the major external “shocks” that Australian universities are having to adapt to. The country’s teaching and research are both recognised as “world class” in international league tables, Johnston notes, but universities are being obliged to deliver them “on less and less funding”. The government’s international education crackdown is��eroding universities’ financial reserves; the Job-ready Graduates reforms have��cut revenue for expensive courses; and neither government nor industry covers the��full costs of research.

“That means some really tough decisions for universities across Australia unless we get a structural fix,” she said. “My university…teaches veterinary science, dentistry, engineering, architecture. These are all very…costly, but they’re critical professional skills that the country needs. Why aren’t we fully funding those programmes?”

The Australian funding environment is undeniably tough. Everyone at Melbourne will be hoping that Johnston’s “diversity, connectivity, resilience” mantra can help them flourish nevertheless.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com