Ken Dowden (born 1950) is Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Birmingham.

Dowden is from Newcastle upon Tyne and studied at Worcester College, Oxford University. He came to Birmingham in 1988, acting as Head of the School of Humanities from 2000 to 2003, as Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity from 2005 to 2012, and as Head of the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion from 2012 to 2016.