Dr. Ron Burnett, RCA is the former President and Vice-Chancellor of Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada and is now President Emeritus and Research Director, Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at Emily Carr.

In 2010, Burnett was awarded the Order of France: Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres. In 2013, Ron Burnett was awarded the Order of Canada and in 2015, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.

He is the author of over of 150 essays and articles in books and journals around the world. He was the editor-in-chief and founder of Ciné-Tracts Magazine, a film and cultural studies journal that was founded in 1976 and produced seventeen issues. Burnett is also a photographer, videomaker and filmmaker. He developed one of the first academic web sites in Canada in the early 1990's, and continues to actively blog about education, culture and the media. He has published three books, Cultures of Vision: Images, Media and the Imaginary, Explorations in Film Theory and How Images Think.

In 2012, Burnett was awarded the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal for service to Canada and Canadians. He was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002. He received the iDMAa for Outstanding Leadership in 2010 and was awarded Educator of the Year, Canadian New Media Association in 2010. Prior to coming to Emily Carr, Burnett was the Director of the Graduate Program in Communications at McGill University, a Senior Lecturer at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia and one of the first people in Canada to receive a Masters degree for a film production.