Ward graduated from Middlesex University with a BA in economics and geography in 1991.
The following year, he completed an MA in transport economics at the University of Leeds.
[1] Between 1992 and 1994, Ward was a research assistant at the University of Birmingham's Department of Economics.
From 1997 to 2000, he was a research associate at the University of Manchester, where he was appointed Lecturer in Human Geography in 2000.
He was promoted to a senior lectureship in 2003 and to a readership in 2005, before being appointed Professor of Human Geography in 2007.