Senior Vice-Principal
- Email Address
- karl.leydecker@abdn.ac.uk
- School/Department
- Senior Vice Principals
- Personal Assistant
- Suzanne Fleming
Biography
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.