Professor Karl Leydecker

Biography

Professor Karl Leydecker FRSE served as Senior Vice-Principal from 2019 to 2025.

During my tenure I played a key role in strategy development (award-winning Aberdeen 2040 Strategy) and performance monitoring to the University Court; line management of all Heads of School; financial planning and budgeting; estates (including strategy, capital and revenue spending); people (including staff experience, development and reward, industrial relations, EDI); environmental sustainability; digital; information governance & security; data & business intelligence; risk management; international partnerships and alliances; external reputation/league tables; pandemic response.

I was previously Vice-Principal (Learning and Teaching) and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at University of Dundee (2013-2019). Under my tenure the University was awarded Gold in the first Teaching Excellence Framework and was UK University of the Year for Student Experience in 2019. Before that I was Dean of Humanities at the University of Kent for 6 years, having also served as a Head of School at Kent and University of Stirling.

I studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with BA in English and Modern Languages and a PhD in German (including two years at the University of Hamburg).

From 2017-2019 I was the Theme Leader for the QAA Scotland Enhancement Theme Evidence for Enhancement: Improving the Student Experience. I am currently on the Board of the QAA, chairing its Audit and Risk Committee.

I am an experienced and current reviewer for the Universities of Excellence initiative of the German Council for Science and Humanities. My own research has focused on marriage and divorce in German and European literature (late eighteenth century to the 1920s), and German drama and social history 1890-1930.

In 2019 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I have served on various RSE committees and was a member of the Royal Irish Academy’s Higher Education Futures Taskforce.

External Memberships

Board member of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and chair of its Audit and Risk Committee

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh