English Language Advisory Group members

Dr Harry Kuchah Kuchah is Lecturer in Language Education at the University of Leeds, having previously taught at Sheffield, Warwick and Bath universities. He has a PhD in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics from the University of Warwick. He was formerly National Pedagogic Inspector in charge of Bilingual education, Ministry of Basic Education, Cameroon. His work experience and research have involved him in many initiatives across Africa, Europe and SE Asia. He was nominated as one of TESOL International Association’s ‘30 upcoming leaders’ in ELT. He has been President and Vice President of IATEFL, is a Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy, and is adviser to the Africa ELTA Executive Board.

Catherine Walter is a researcher, teacher educator and materials developer, and an advocate for equality and inclusion in education. She is an Emeritus Fellow in Applied Linguistics at Linacre College, University of Oxford; a National Teaching Fellow; and a Past President of IATEFL. She is the Series Adviser for Navigate and the co-author of The Oxford English Grammar Course, both with OUP. Catherine is an avid powerlifter, and she promotes strength training for women and for older people. 

Dave Allan is the Director of NILE, the Norwich Institute for Language Education, which in the last 20 years has provided professional development for 40,000 teachers from 65 countries. Dave has been in ELT for 40 years, has worked regularly worldwide with and for the British Council since 1982 and has served on a range of British Council committees and working parties. He’s also a fanatical supporter of Sunderland AFC.

Steve is Chief International Officer at the Regent Group UK. He was formerly the Chair of English UK, the national association of accredited English Language centres in the UK, and a Managing Director of the British Study Centres Group looking after Transnational Education and University Pathways. He has worked in the ELT industry for over 25 years as a school owner, for private higher education, and in the profit and not-for-profit private ELT sector. He is TEFLQ (Cambridge DELTA) and is a Fellow at the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Michael is a consultant, speaker and Director of Highdale Consulting, which recently developed ELT radio programmes for West Africa. He serves as trustee on boards including TIRF, ICC and International Students House, and is chair of the Department for International Trade’s ELT Working Group. He was formerly Director, English Language Innovation at the British Council, Director of Eurocentres USA, and CEO of the International House World network.

Fiona Copland is Head of Department , Education Studies at Warwick University, and formerly Professor of TESOL at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where she was also the Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Fiona has taught English in Nigeria, Hong Kong and Japan and has worked in teacher education in the UK for over 20 years. She has published widely, including Linguistic ethnography: collecting, analysing and presenting data (with Angela Creese) and The Routledge handbook of teaching English to young learners (with Sue Garton).

Khawla Badwan is Reader in TESOL and applied linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University.  Her interdisciplinary work brings together expertise in intercultural communication, literacy debates, decoloniality, language education, language and sustainability, language and social justice, language and identity, and sociolinguistics of globalisation.

Her most recent publication is Language in a Globalised World: Social Justice Perspectives on Mobility and Contact (Palgrave, 2021). This book won the runner-up Book Prize Award 2022 organised by the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL). 

She is editor (with Shoba Arun, Hadjer Taibi, and Farwa Batool) of Global Migration and Diversity of Educational Experiences in the Global South and North: A Child-Centred Approach (Routledge, 2023).

Khawla is appointed by the Quality Assurance Agency as the chair of the advisory board for reviewing the benchmarking statement for Linguistics (2022-2023). She is currently co-leading the Manchester Centre for Research in Linguistics hosted at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Her latest research projects include The Voices of the Future project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (Co-I) and the Children’s Sociolinguistics Project funded by Manchester Metropolitan University (Principal Investigator).

Rachel Wicaksono is Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics, and Head of the School of Education, Language and Psychology at York St John University. She has taught English, trained teachers, inspected programmes, and led courses and schools in: Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Japan, Thailand and Sweden.

In 2013, she was awarded a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship for her work on the internationalisation of Higher Education. She has been a member of the BAAL Executive Committee since 2017 and is currently Membership Secretary.

She has published on applied linguistics and English language teacher education, including: Mapping Applied Linguistics: A Guide for Students and Practitioners (Routledge), York’s Hidden Stories: Interview in Applied Linguistics (Palgrave), and Ontologies of English: Conceptualising the Language for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment (Cambridge University Press).

Thom Kiddle is Director at Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE), where he has worked since 2011. Previously, he was head of academic research and educational technology at the Chilean-British University in Santiago, and worked in Portugal, the UK, Australia and Thailand in language teaching, teacher training and language assessment.

He has a Master’s degree in Language Testing from Lancaster University and the Cambridge DELTA, and his role at NILE involves strategic and organisational leadership, and training and consultancy in a range of areas including the CEFR, testing and assessment, learning technologies, and language teaching methodology.

Thom is also Chair of the Eaquals Board of Trustees, and treasurer and founding director of AQUEDUTO – the Association for Quality Education and Training Online.

He has published in Applied Linguistics, Language Assessment Quarterly and System journals; in 2019, two chapters in Routledge Handbooks of Language Teacher Education; and has two forthcoming publications on Quality Assurance and Digital Language Teaching Materials in 2023. Thom was also a plenary speaker at IATEFL 2021.

Dr Tony Capstick is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at University of Reading and Birkbeck College London. His main areas of interest are teacher education, multilingualism and migration. He has worked on research to understand the language in education needs of Syrian refugees in the Middle East. He has also written about the language and education needs of adult migrants living in the UK as part of his work investigating immigration and integration