Talia Isaacs is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London. She has served as departmental Head of Research, Inclusion Co-Lead, and Programme Leader for both the MA TESOL Pre-Service and In-Service programmes. She has led and/or spearheaded modules in a wide range of topics.
Externally, Talia is a member of the ESRC’s Peer Review College, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), a UKCGE-recognised research supervisor, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 2023. She is a founding member of the Canadian Association of Language Assessment, has contributed to both the European and international language testing associations (EALTA and ILTA), and co-led the Communication theme for the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership (TMRP) Trial Conduct Working Group.
Talia is Co-Editor-Chief of the international journal, Language Testing. She has served on the Editorial Boards of journals in the areas of clinical trials, educational and language assessment, evidence synthesis, and second language pronunciation, reflecting her eclectic research interests. Methodological interests include mixed methods, systematic reviews, and open science practices.
Talia’s work broadly addresses the socio-educational challenge of reducing language barriers and improving the communication skills of adults for whom English is a nondominant language to foster their workplace and academic success. She is especially keen to extend her previous or existing collaborations with departmental colleagues on
– Global Englishes, standards, and the native speaker
– improving research quality and reducing research waste
– assessment and psycholinguistic perspectives in language needs and gatekeeping in different contexts
– assessment reform, international comparisons, and other topics in educational assessment
Her research and views have been featured in the media on varied topics including accent variation (BBC Local Radio), comprehensibility (CBC; Radio Canada International), assessment in higher education (Financial Times, forthcoming; Times Higher Education), and vaccine hesitancy (iNews).