Professor Barry O'Sullivan OBE is the Director of English Language Research at the British Council. He has written extensively on language testing and regularly presents his work at conferences globally. He designed and led the development and validation of the British Council’s Aptis test and is recognised for his work on the socio-cognitive model of test development and validation. He contributed significantly to assessment in education policy though his paper on the comprehensive learning system (2020) and his work on localisation in learning systems. He currently works on the practical application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to language assessment.
Barry is the founding president of the UK Association of Language Testing and Assessment and is visiting professor at the University of Reading and advisory professor to Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2016) and the Asian Association for Language Assessment (2017). He was awarded an OBE by the government of the UK in 2019 for his contribution to international language testing.