Timothy O'Shea

This article is about the Principal of the University of Edinburgh. For the former English football (soccer) player, see Tim O'Shea (footballer). For the American basketball coach, see Tim O'Shea.

Timothy O'Shea
Principal of The University of Edinburgh
Term	2002 – present
Born	1949 Hamburg, Germany
Alma mater	Sussex University Leeds University
Website	[1]

Sir Timothy Michael Martin O'Shea, FRSE (born 1949, Hamburg, Germany) is the current Vice-Chancellor and Principal of The University of Edinburgh.

Biography

Prof. O'Shea grew up in London, attended the Royal Liberty School in Gidea Park, London and later went to school in Essex. A Computer Scientist, he was Master of Birkbeck College from 1998 and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 2001.

A graduate of the Universities of Sussex and Leeds, he has worked in the United States and for the Open University where he founded the Computer Assisted Learning Research Group and worked on a range of educational technology research and development projects, later becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor there. He was a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Department of Artificial Intelligence, from 1974-78.

The most translated of his ten books is Learning and Teaching with Computers, co-authored with John Self and his most recent 2007 book, In Order to Learn, published by Oxford University Press, was co-edited with Frank Ritter, Josef Nerb and Erno Lehtinen.

Professor O'Shea became Principal of the University of Edinburgh in October 2002. Since his appointment he has sat on various boards including the Boards of Scottish Enterprise, the Intermediary Technology Institute Scotland Ltd, the British Council, the Governing Body of the Roslin Institute and has been Convenor of the Research and Commercialisation Committee of Universities Scotland. He is currently Acting Convener of Universities Scotland.

In 2004 he was elected Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

He was knighted in the 2008 New Year Honours.

Boards and Committees

Since January 2009, Professor O’Shea has been Chair of JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee). He is also Chair of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise. He is Universities Scotland Vice Convenor and sits on the Council of the Confucius Institute Headquarters. He has served two terms both as a Trustee of the British Council and as a member of the main Board of Scottish Enterprise. Professor O'Shea is currently also involved in overseeing the German Initiative for Excellence, or 'Excellenzinitiative'.

References

Academic offices
Preceded by Sir Stewart Sutherland	Edinburgh University Principals 2002–Present	Succeeded by (current incumbent)