Michael Grant Ignatieff, M.P., Ph.D. (born May 12, 1947 in Toronto) is a public intellectual, historian, and Canadian politician. He has held academic positions at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard. An award-winning author, he has also worked as a journalist and documentary filmmaker. In 2005, he entered politics and is now Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Ignatieff was based in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 2000. During this time he was on the faculty at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities and worked as a film-maker and political commentator for the BBC. He lived in the United States from 2000 to 2005; there, he was director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He returned to Canada in 2005 to take a position at the University of Toronto, and entered politics the following year, winning election as the Member of Parliament for Etobicoke - Lakeshore.

Ignatieff was named associate critic for Human Resources and Skills Development in the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet on February 22, 2006. However, he left this position after announcing on April 7, 2006 that he would stand as one of the Liberal Party of Canada leadership candidates. On December 2, 2006 he was defeated by Stéphane Dion on the leadership convention's fourth and final ballot.

Ignatieff is the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and Alison Grant, and the grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, Minister of Education to Tsar Nicholas II and one of the few Tsarist ministers to have escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. Ignatieff is fluent in both English and French, and has a basic knowledge of Russian, the native language of his father.

Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna M Zsohar and has two children, Theo and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough. He has a younger brother, Andrew, a community worker who assisted with Ignatieff's campaign. Although described as not a "church guy", Ignatieff was raised Russian Orthodox and occassionally attends a service with family