Dunedin-born, Prof Olssen is a former Otago senior lecturer in education who has been based at the University of Surrey, in England, since 2001.
He recently gained a rare honour by being elected an Academician at the British-based Academy of Social Sciences, in recognition of his "eminent" standing as a social scientist.
He was "naturally delighted" to become an Academician, he said in an interview.
Prof Olssen is professor of political theory and education policy at the Surrey politics department and has two main research interests, one mainly involving higher education policy.
"The other is political philosophy, and in relation to sustainability, etc, I have mainly sought to point out how outdated and irrelevant all previous political philosophies - liberalism, Marxism, Plato, Aristotle - really are, to solving problems in the 21st century, and how we need a new one," he says.
He is co-author or author of several major books, including Education Policy: Globalisation, Citizenship, Democracy (2004), which was written with two academics at Massey University, John Codd and Anne-Marie O'Neill.
"The book argues that globalisation is an extension of neoliberalism and is destructive of the welfare state, community and democracy.
"On a positive note, it sees education as the essential ingredient in building strong nation-states," he says.
The book has been favourably reviewed, being described as "deeply impressive" by senior Australian educationist Richard Bates.
Prof Olssen's book Toward A Global Thin Community: Nietzsche, Foucault and the Cosmopolitan Commitment (2008) aims to develop a new approach to the theory of a global community.
This initiative seeks to avoid, on the one hand, perpetuating inequalities through excessive individualism and, on the other hand, denying individual liberties through what he terms the "thick communitarianism"- meaning excessive collectivism- of Marx and Hegel.
Prof Olssen, who is the brother of leading Otago University historian, Emeritus Prof Erik Olssen, is winning growing recognition abroad as an important political theorist.
"My three main books all document the two facets of this approach: one being a critique of previous approaches in political philosophy; the other - for which Thin Community is an example - being to start the long, slow journey of trying to develop a better approach, one that enables us to develop a `philosophy of the future' in very `uncharted waters', of climate change and so on," Prof Mark Olssen said.
Dr David McKenzie, a former Otago humanities assistant vice-chancellor, said Prof Olssen had become a leading international scholar whose recent honour was a "remarkable achievement".
