After studying languages and literatures at the University of Cambridge (England), Prof. Byram began his professional life as a teacher of foreign languages in secondary education in England, complemented by work in adult education. He then moved to the University of Durham to the School of Education, where he worked for almost 30 years, first in initial teacher education and then increasingly in doctoral education, for both professional and academic doctorates.

From the 1990s until recently, Prof. Byram was adviser and expert at the Council of Europe in language policy and intercultural and democratic citizenship.

His research focused first on the education of ethnic minorities and then on the cultural dimension of foreign language teaching and learning in mainstream education. Gradually, this led him into research on intercultural communication and education. Prof. Byram’s best-known book is Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence, which will appear in a second edition in December 2020.

A third strand of research in recent years has focused on investigating how people experience the process of completing a doctorate, either as supervisors or supervisees/students, and this is being continued with research into the ways in which doctorates are examined in different universities throughout the world. This research is based at the University of Sofia.

Contact: michael.byram@emuni.si