Professor Barry O’Sullivan is the Head of Assessment Research and Development at the British Council. He has researched factors affecting spoken performance; assessing rater behaviour; assessing speaking and writing; specific purpose assessment; benchmarking and standards; and has worked on the development and refinement of the socio-cognitive model of test development and validation since 2000. He has presented his work at over 150 conferences around the world, while over 90 of his publications have appeared in a range of international journals, and in many books and technical reports. In addition, he has published five books in the area of language testing. He is the founding president of the UK Association of Language Testing and Assessment and holds honorary and visiting chairs at the Universities of Reading and Roehampton (UK) and at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). In 2016 he was awarded fellowship of the Academy of Social Science in the UK.