My research interests include issues of policy and practice relating to English language and academic literacy in English-medium higher education institutions, and in particular the embedding of academic literacies, the benefits and challenges of post-enrolment English language assessment, and the intersection of English language and academic literacy provision and the widening participation agenda. I am also interested in academic writing and in pragmatics ? especially within the context of global Englishes and in terms of the application of pragmatic research/theory to language teaching materials development. I am interested in the issue of widening participation more generally and am currently involved in an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant project on attrition among non-traditional students who enter higher education.

I am an applied linguist and have been involved in language teaching and learning for 30 years in Italy, Japan, Australia and the UK. I cut my teeth as a teacher in Italy, after which I spent 9 years in Japan, working initially at a private University and later an American University (Temple University Japan), where I served as Assistant Director of its English language programme, with responsibility for the Osaka campus. Following my return to the UK to undertake research, I obtained my MPhil from Cambridge in 1992 and my PhD in 1996, under the supervision of Henry Widdowson. I then worked at King's College London for 11 years as Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics (teaching on the MA in ELT & Applied Linguistics and the BA in Language and Communication) and Programme Director of the English Language Centre. I moved to the University of South Australia in 2008, where I spent four and a half years, much of which was devoted to conceptualising and taking carriage of a new model of post-enrolment English language assessment and provision and, latterly, as Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Head of Language and Literacy, building a new team responsible for its implementation. I joined the Centre for Applied Linguistics here at Warwick in July 2012.