Duncan is Professor of Strategic Management and Director of Executive Education at UCL School of Management.

Prior to joining UCL School of Management, he was the Dean of Nottingham University Business School and Professor in Strategic Management. This followed on from holding the Sir Roland Smith Chair of Strategic Management at Lancaster University and previously, twenty years at Warwick Business School where he received his PhD in 1999 on corporate takeovers. Duncan is an Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham and sits on the Toulouse School of Management (TSM) International Advisory Board, France, and several other international academic advisory boards. He is also a founding member of The European M&A Institute based in Toulouse, France. He regularly sits on accrediting panels for international business schools for EQUIS. 

Duncan is currently Associate Editor for the journal LRP (Long Range Planning) and has sat on many editorial board including the Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Change: Briefings in Entrepreneurial Finance, the EuroMed Journal of Business, the Africa Journal of Management.

He served as awards committee chair and track chair for Strategy as Practice at the Strategic Management Society conference, where he has been recognised as a Friend of the Society.

Duncan has published over 50 peer reviewed articles on strategic management and mergers and acquisitions in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Learning & Education, British Journal of Management, California Management Review, Journal of World Business, LRP, MIT Sloan Management Review, Organisation Studies. He is the most published academic on Mergers and Acquisitions in Europe. His work focuses on the work of strategists and is characterised as enagaged scholarship using mixed methodogies. Duncan has also published 14 books including co-authoring Exploring Strategy, 13th edition (2023), ‘the most influential strategy textbook in the world’ (FT 30th May, 2021).