Ron Burnett OC. OBC. RCA Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres, is an author, professor and the President Emeritus and Research Director for the new Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

In 1981, he received a PhD in Communications Studies from McGill University. He was a professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne from 1983 to 1986 and a teacher, during the 1970s at Vanier College in Montreal. He was the director of the Graduate Program in Communications at McGill University from 1987 to 1996.

Works
Burnett is the author of Cultures of Vision: Images, Media and the Imaginary, published by Indiana University Press in 1995 and How Images Think published by MITPress.[6] He is the editor of Explorations in Film Theory published in 1991 by Indiana University Press.[7] He is the author of over 150 published articles and book chapters. He is an adjunct professor at York University, and is one of the founders of Canadian Film Studies through a journal that he developed and edited, Ciné-Tracts, from 1977 until 1982.[8]

Burnett completed twenty-two years as president and Vice-Chancellor at ECUAD and is now President Emeritus and a Professor and Researcher.