O'Shea grew up in
London, attended the
Royal Liberty School, in
Romford,
Essex. A computer scientist, he was Master of
Birkbeck College from 1998 to 2002 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 to 1978. O'Shea received an Honorary Doctorate from
Heriot-Watt University in 2008 On 21 June 2016, it was announced that O'Shea would step down from his position as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the university in September 2017. He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Academy of Engineering in 2017. ==Boards and Committees==