Specialising in transmission and textual criticism, he was considered a leading expert on the work of Ovid and Lucretius.
[2] He spent the majority of his career at Cambridge University, where he was an emeritus fellow of Peterhouse until his death in 2019.
[5] In 1974, he was named the seventh Kennedy Professor of Latin, an appointment which he held until his retirement in 1982.
In addition to his post at Cambridge, Kenney has held visiting positions at Harvard and Berkeley.
[6] He was elected foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976.