Prof Lewis earned his B.A. with first-class honors in English literature from McGill University in 1990 and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University in 1997. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Yale faculty in 1998 as assistant professor in the Comparative Literature and English departments, rising to the rank of full professor in 2007.

From 2012 to 2017, Prof Lewis served as founding president of Yale-NUS College. Under his leadership, the college developed into a thriving model of residential liberal arts education much admired and studied throughout Asia and the world. From 2017 to 2022, he served as Yale’s vice president for global strategy and as a vice provost with responsibility for research on international matters and the support of teaching and learning across campus. In these roles, he was active in planning the launch of the Yale Institute for Global Health, the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, and the Yale Schwarzman Center. He has served on the Yale-NUS Governing Board since 2021.

Born in Toronto, Prof Lewis is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. His wife Sheila Hayre, a graduate of Yale Law School and former staff attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance, teaches at Quinnipiac University Law School in North Haven, Connecticut. Their son is a recent graduate of Yale College, and their daughter is a current Yale undergraduate.