Dr Owen Kelly
Director of Engagement and Internationalisation
About Speaker
Dr Owen Kelly holds degrees in Chinese, Social Policy and Philosophy, all from the University of Edinburgh. He also holds a Diploma in Chinese Language from the University of Shandong. He lived in China for a year in the early 1980s, as an undergraduate student, and subsequently worked as an English teacher in Taiwan and as a translator from Chinese, in London. Since then he has maintained his interest in the Chinese language, though fluency remains a distant dream. He worked for 20 years as a civil servant in the UK and Scottish governments, dealing at different times with UK/China relations in various settings. During that time, he was seconded to the EU Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo in 2010. He also spent 8 years representing the Scottish financial services industry, when he advised and supported financial companies doing business in China. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Banker Institute and he joined the University of Edinburgh Business School in 2016, where he works as Director of Engagement and Internationalisation.