Senior Management

Professor Karl Leydecker took up the role of Senior Vice-Principal in March 2019. He is responsible for providing direct line management to all Heads of School and ensuring the delivery of ambitious School plans and budgets. He coordinated the development of the University’s award-winning Aberdeen 2040 strategy launched on the 525th anniversary of the founding of the University in February 2020. He is the strategic lead for People, Estates and Environmental Sustainability and institutional strategic planning, and deputises for the Principal and Vice-Chancellor as required.

Karl was previously Vice-Principal (Learning and Teaching) and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Dundee from 2013. Before that he was Dean of Humanities at the University of Kent for 6 years, having also served as a Head of School at Kent and before that University of Stirling.

Karl studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, taking a BA in English and Modern Languages (including a year at the University of Passau) and a PhD in German (including two years at the University of Hamburg). Karl’s research interests include marriage and divorce in German and European literature from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s, and German drama and social history from 1890 to 1930.

From 2017 until taking up his current role, Karl was the Theme Leader for the QAA Scotland Enhancement Theme Evidence for Enhancement: Improving the Student Experience. In 2022 Karl joined the Board of the QAA.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has served on the RSE’s Tertiary Education Futures Group and the Royal Irish Academy’s Higher Education Futures Taskforce.

Professor Marion Campbell is Vice-Principal (Research) for the University of Aberdeen.  She was appointed to the role in October 2017.  In this role Professor Campbell has primary responsibility for promoting the University’s research ambitions, ensuring effective delivery of the University’s strategic objectives for research. and for enabling a research context for academic colleagues to deliver world-leading, impactful research.  She also leads on the establishment of interdisciplinary research across the institution.  

Prior to this appointment Marion was Dean of Research for Life Sciences and Medicine following ten years as Director of the Scottish government core-funded Health Services Research Unit.

Marion is a medical statistician by training, a clinical trialist methodologist and Professor of Health Services Research. Her main research interests are in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials especially the design and conduct of surgical and device trials.  She has published widely on clinical trials methodology including on cluster randomised trials, design of surgical trials, pragmatic trials and trials reporting.  She has served on many national and international funding agencies and committees and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Public Health and the International Society for Clinical Trials.

Marion graduated with an honours degree in Statistics from the University of Aberdeen and subsequently gained an MSc in Statistics and PhD in Public Health.  Following early career appointments within the National Health Service in the fields of Operational Research and Statistics of Medical Audit, she joined the Health Services Research Unit in 1993.  She became Director of the Unit at the end of 2006, and Dean of Research for Life Sciences and Medicine in 2016.  HSRU remains her academic base where she is co-Director of the RCSEng Aberdeen Surgical Trials Centre.

Professor Alan Speight is Vice-Principal for Global Engagement and has strategic oversight of the University’s strategic alliances and international partnerships, and for the University’s global student recruitment strategy, across all levels of study and modes of delivery, including online. He has particular responsibility for the University’s tripartite strategic alliance with the Universities of Curtin and Calgary, and for the University’s transnational education activities, including through its partnerships in Qatar and China.

He has provided leadership for numerous successful international partnerships delivering student recruitment pathways, articulation routes, transnational education, including English language training, joint programmes, distance taught and distance learning programmes, and dual degrees. He has worked closely with regional agencies, national governments and their embassies and representatives in the Middle East, China, and across South-East Asia.

Alan was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Hull, having previously been Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) at Swansea University. He is an Economics graduate of the University of Essex, and a postgraduate of Queen Mary University, London, where he completed both an MSc and a PhD in Economics, prior to taking up his first academic position as a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Aberdeen. He has held professorial positions in Economics and in Finance, and his research background is in empirical finance and financial economics, including the analysis of financial market volatility and the management of financial risk.

I am Vice-Principal Education with responsibility for leading the effective delivery of the University’s strategic objectives for Education including: quality and innovation in learning, teaching and assessment; student experience and engagement, including student support; student success; employability and entrepreneurship; quality assurance and enhancement across the provision; and student mobility. I am particularly proud of our National Student Survey results in 2022 in which we are ranked 4th out of 122 UK universities – a reflection of the focus of our university on the student experience.

I am the chair of the University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and lead the University’s work on our Antiracism Strategy, the Race Equality Charter, and on Decolonising the Curriculum. The Antiracism Strategy was launched in August 2022 and we are continuing our focus on taking action to achieve our strategic ambitions.

I am deputy chair of the QAA Scotland Enhancement Theme (Resilient Learning Communities), and deputy chair of a QAA Scotland project on the Anti-Racist Curriculum.

In my previous role, I was Senior Pro Vice Chancellor and Dean of a Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care, and Professor of Nurse Education, at Anglia Ruskin University. I also held an institutional role in the leadership of the student retention strategy including the development of a university-wide revised personal tutor role. Prior to that I worked at The Robert Gordon University in a leadership role in the School of Nursing and Midwifery having had a career in clinical nursing practice for 15 years.

My research interests have included student retention, the first-year student experience, social capital in the context of the student experience, compassion in healthcare practice, and student leadership in healthcare practice. These interests inform my approach to leadership and to working with students with a focus on compassion and partnership working.