Alan Gilloran is Vice Principal (Academic) and formerly Dean of Health and Social Sciences at QMU. He has been a member of the Strategic Management Group for ten years and currently is convener of the university's Research Strategy Committee. He has initiated strategic international collaborations in South India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He has recently acted as expert adviser to the EU Committee of The Regions in forming an opinion on the "Innovation Union". He sits on the Universities Scotland Research & Knowledge Exchange Committee.

Previously he was Co-Director of the RBS Centre for the Older Person's Agenda and was a member of the Scottish Executive's Expert Group on Free Personal Care for Elderly People in Scotland. He was founding chair of the South East Scotland Wider Access Regional Forum and a member of Universities Scotland's Social Inclusion Advisory Group. His PhD from the University of Edinburgh is in historical demography but broadly he describes himself as a sociologist having spent over twenty years teaching a range of subjects within that discipline. His research is in the areas of older people and in mental health.