Professor Alan Speight is Vice-Principal Global Engagement. He has strategic oversight of all aspects of the development and delivery of student recruitment strategy, promoting the University as a destination of choice to potential students and ensuring the delivery of the University’s student recruitment ambitions.
Professor Speight was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Hull from 2015, having previously been Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) at Swansea University from 2008, and before that Dean of the School of Business, Economics and Law at Swansea for five years.
Professor Speight’s previous senior management positions have involved broad portfolios with strategic responsibility for learning and teaching, the student experience, educational partnerships, and internationalisation. 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 has held professorial positions in both Economics and Finance, and his research interests lie primarily in empirical finance, financial economics and econometrics, including the analysis of financial market volatility and the management of financial risk. 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, from 1986-1990.
His wider experience includes membership of numerous external sector bodies including the UCAS Advisory Council, the UUK International PVC Network, and as a Non-Executive Director and Board Member for the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. He is currently a member of the QAA Degree Awarding Powers Advisory Committee.