About Us

Harry took over the role of Chair in September 2024. He is Associate Professor of Language, Social Justice and Education the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK. In addition to being a former a Hornby Scholar (2006/07), Harry was also recognised by TESOL International Association as one of 30 Up-and-Coming Leaders in ELT globally in 2017. He is also Past President of the International Association of Teachers of English as a. Foreign Language (IATEFL) and currently Chair of the British Council English Language Advisory Group (ELAG). He is co-editor of International Perspectives on Teaching English in Difficult Circumstances (Springer, 2018) and Ethical and Methodological Issues in Researching Young Language Learners in School Contexts (Multilingual Matters, 2021).

John is an international cultural relations and education professional with major experience in project management, teacher education and team leadership. He lectured in education at the University of Manchester and worked for the British Council for twenty-five years in senior management and leadership posts in the UK and overseas.

Anita is a highly versatile senior finance professional with significant expertise in building and developing effective finance functions and aligning to organisational requirements. She continuously assesses opportunities to improve policies and processes and drive greater transparency, reporting and business performance. Builds strong stakeholder relationships with a collaborative and consensus building leadership style. Thrives in encouraging diversity of thought through inclusive and empowered workplace cultures.

Caroline has been a Hornby Trustee since 2016, and its Chair since 2020. She has worked in ELT, publishing, and digital technologies for the British Council, publishers and Universities. She was an IATEFL Trustee in 2013/17. She has an MA in Second Language Learning & Teaching, London University, and an MBA, City University. Caroline was the Chair of the Trust from early 2020 to Sept 2024.

Bhaskar first got to know the Hornby Trust through working with them when he was the British Council’s Global Director of English. Before that he lived and worked in a range of overseas countries including Cameroon, Nigeria, Egypt, China and Thailand, developing a first-hand understanding of their education and English language teaching systems.

Martin has been involved in the teaching and learning of English since the late 1970s. He has worked at schools and universities in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, China and Hungary and was Head of International Education at the School of Education, University of Leeds. His research focus is TESOL curriculum change, particularly how English education systems can support teachers through the confusing cultural and pedagogic challenges that such change entails for many school and classroom contexts. Martin first encountered the Hornby Trust when he met and taught Hornby scholars on the MA TESOL programme at Leeds. He has been a trustee since 2019 and is enjoying working to support the process of understanding and enabling the Decentring of ELT with fellow trustees, alumni, scholars, and Teachers’ Associations.

Neil is interested in international education, transnational education and global student mobility. He has worked in South-East and South Asia for over 20 years, mainly with the British Council. In that organisation, in the UK, he held various director positions for education, international development and science & technology. His doctorate relates to analytical chemistry although he also pursued further studies in economics of education and education & development. Neil is a trustee at Council for Education in the Commonwealth and a volunteer with Care4Calais, assisting asylum seekers.

Anna is Chief Executive of The Access Project, a UK-based social mobility education charity focused on supporting access to top universities for under-resourced young people. Previously Anna was an Executive Director at Education Development Trust delivering on UK and global education and employability programmes and before that spent many years with The British Council both in global roles and in many country roles. Anna has been a Trustee with AS Hornby Education Trust since 2019.

Graham has been involved in ELT as a teacher and teacher educator of over thirty years, and, having previously taught in a variety of contexts, now works at Northumbria University, UK. He is the author of Exploring English Language Teaching: Language in Action (Routledge, 2011; 2nd edition, 2017), which was the winner of the 2012 British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) book prize. He also edited the Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (2016), and was editor of ELT Journal from 2013–17. His professional interests range from classroom discourse and language teaching methodology to the ways in which English language teachers understand their practice and the role research might play in their professional development. He became a Trustee of the Hornby Trust in 2022.

Amol, former Director, Centre for English Language Education, Ambedkar University Delhi, has been a teacher, teacher educator, teacher community leader and ELT consultant through a career spanning 40 years. His professional interests include teacher development and communities, history of ELE, decentring in ELT and teacher research.

Karen has worked in the charity sector for many years in a variety of roles. Working with different Trustee Boards has really helped her to appreciate how important the charity sector is. Karen feels that it is a privilege to work with so many talented people giving their own time and skills to support this amazing cause.

Aida has over a decade of involvement in both non-profit and international organisations, she has managed large-scale initiatives and fostered global partnerships. Passionate about fostering collaboration and driving meaningful change, Aida is committed to supporting the Trust’s mission through efficient operations and social media planning.

Komila is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the School of Education, Learning and Communication Sciences, University of Warwick. She was a Hornby Scholar in 2016-2017. She chose to specialise in Language Testing and Assessment when doing her MA in the UK and most of her work on returning to Uzbekistan was in this area. At the start of her career, Komila mainly worked in the area of pre-service education but for the last seven years, she has also been actively involved in in-service teacher education too. One of the projects she took part as one of the authors was the textbook for in-service teaching training programme – Reconceptualizing Language Teaching: An in-service teacher training course in Uzbekistan where she could combine both of her interests.  Relying on the experience gained through several country-wide projects and reforms initiated by the British Council in Uzbekistan, Komila established a teacher community – UzTESPING (Uzbekistan Teachers of ESP Integrated Networking Group) in 2018 and has been running it since then. Komila’s research interests include collaborative action research, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, ESP, materials development, SLA and language assessment.