I'm a practitioner-researcher with a varied set of experience. Before joining the School of Education and English in 2021 I worked in roles across research, teaching, teacher training, management, and assessment, in the UK and China. In assessment I was a designer and developer on the large academic English testing system of UNNC’s Preliminary Year Programme, winning the British Council’s annual Innovation in Assessment Prize for work completed in this role. In management I was the first director of the English Language Center at Zhejiang University’s International Campus in Haining, working in partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Edinburgh, where I set up all departmental curricula and systems. For teacher training I've now taught on three different Masters courses for pre-service teachers of English, including the University of Edinburgh’s large MSc TESOL programme, as well as on various short teacher training courses for in-service teachers. Apart from this I’ve also taught a range of courses in English, education, and social science research methods at other universities in the UK and China, including the University of Warwick, Tsinghua University, and Northeast Normal University.

My BA was in analytic philosophy at the University of Cambridge, focusing on philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. My doctoral degree was the EdD professional doctorate in education studied with the University of Nottingham. The resulting doctoral thesis was a portfolio of articles relating to the evaluation of practicality in educational assessments, and was externally examined by Prof Antony Kunnan. I also hold the Certificate and Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA and DELTA).

Here in the School of Education and English much of my work relates to the MA TESOL. I’m particularly enthusiastic about the application of research in practice, in the spirit of "evidence-informed education", and enjoy using X/Twitter for exchange with other researchers and practitioners. I currently speak Chinese at around intermediate or upper intermediate level, and welcome all opportunities for practice.

Courses on the MA TESOL, MA Applied Linguistics, EdD, and BA English programmes, and supervision of EdD and PhD research students.

Module convenor for two Master's modules: the core course 'Research Methods' and the optional course 'Language Testing and Assessment'.

Each year I supervise Master's in TESOL dissertations. I am currently particularly interested in supervising dissertation work on classroom pedagogy (such as observational research on video-recorded lessons), other parts of the curriculum (including textbooks and homework), assessment (including those used within schools and universities as well as famous external tests), standards for evaluating English (related to English as a lingua franca), online teaching, AI-mediated English learning and communication, educational policy, comparative English education (i.e. comparing English education in China to English education in other countries), content-based instruction (i.e. teaching English while teaching another subject at the same time), and Master's in TESOL study itself.

(Please note that I am not currently seeking to take on new PhD students. If you are interested in applying for PhD study at the School of Education and English, please follow the guidance given on the School's webpages. Enquiries about PhD supervision sent to my email address will in most cases not be answered.)

Currently my main interests are educational assessment/testing (including language assessment), English for academic purposes, multimedia education and communication, higher education, and TESOL in the Chinese context generally. As someone with years of experience in educational assessment/testing, both as practitioner and researcher, I'm happy to draw on my assessment expertise to contribute to colleagues' research as a co-author.

ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9703-7410