Professor Lynda Taylor (UKALTA President 2020-2025)

Bio

Lynda Taylor is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Research in English Language Learning and Assessment (CRELLA) at the University of Bedfordshire, UK. She has worked for over 40 years in the field of language teaching, learning and assessment, first as an ELT teacher and teacher educator, later as a materials developer and assessment researcher, particularly with IELTS and the full range of Cambridge English language qualifications. Her research interests include speaking and writing assessment, testing accommodations for language learners with special needs, and the development of language assessment literacy. She was formerly Assistant Research Director with Cambridge Assessment English and advised on test development and validation projects around the world. She has presented invited plenaries, research papers and practical workshops internationally, and has published extensively in academic journals in the field. She has contributed numerous chapters to encyclopaedia and handbooks, and authored/edited many volumes in CUP’s Studies in Language Testing series. In 2020 Lynda was elected President of the UK Association for Language Testing and Assessment (UKALTA) and went on to serve a second 3-year term in that role. In 2022 she was awarded Fellowship of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS). Her most recent publications include a pair of volumes, co-edited with Beverly Baker and published in 2024, on the topic of Language Assessment Literacy and Competence (CUP). Lynda gave the Alan Davies Lecture at LTRC 2024 in Innsbruck and received the Cambridge/ILTA Distinguished Achievement Award for 2024 at LTRC 2025 in Bangkok.

Quote for UKALTA

It was a privilege and a pleasure for me to serve 2 terms as President of UKALTA from 2020-2025 and to help the association grow and mature over that time. As UKALTA enters its second decade, I have every confidence that UKALTA will continue to develop as a supportive professional community for researchers, practitioners and policymakers in the field of language testing and assessment, and will go on to make an important contribution to the world of language education in the future.

 

Professor Barry O’Sullivan (UKALTA President 2015-2019)

Bio

Professor Barry O’Sullivan has been involved in language testing for over thirty years. He has written extensively on the subject, with over one hundred publications, and has presenting his work at conferences around the world on many occasions. 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 has also contributed significantly to assessment in education policy though his paper on the comprehensive learning system (2020) and his work on localisation in learning systems. Most recently, he has explored 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 a visiting professor at the University of Reading in the UK and a special advisory professor to Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. His work has been recognized by the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK (awarded fellowship in 2016); The Asian Association for Language Assessment (elected to fellowship in 2017); and by the government of the UK (awarded an OBE in 2019). In addition, he has received lifetime contribution/achievement awards from the e-Assessment Association (2023), the English Language Testing Society (2025) and the Distinguished Achievement Award 2026 from the International Language Testing Association.

Quote for UKALTA

Language testing is changing at a pace I’ve never seen before. The emergence of AI offers both challenges and opportunities to all of us. The primary challenges include the urgent need for more AI literacy and the need to always remember that while technology offers amazing opportunities it should never drive our approach. Instead, we should always place the test taker and the language at the centre of everything we do.