Hamish Chalmers started professional life as a primary school teacher in the UK, in 1997. He moved to Thailand in 2001 where he taught in the international sector for several years, until returning to the UK to study for a Masters in TESOL and a PhD in Applied Linguistics. He now works at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, lecturing in Applied Linguistics and researching in the field of English as an Additional Language (EAL). In Thailand, he was Director of EAL in an all-through primary and secondary international school, where 90% of learners were learning through English while still learning the language itself. In addition to supporting learners directly, he was responsible for whole-school EAL professional development. He is Vice-Chair of the NALDIC, the UK's subject association for EAL, and regularly contributes to its flagship teacher-oriented periodical, the EAL Journal. He has also contributed to the Chartered College of Teaching's Impact journal and ResearchED magazine. He is committed to facilitating stakeholder's engagement in educational research, to ensure that it reflects what is meaningful, feasible and useful for teachers and learners.
Tom Bennett is the founder of researchED, a grass-roots organisation that raises research literacy in education and campaigns for better evidence awareness worldwide.
In 2015 he became the UK government's school 'Behaviour Czar', advising on behaviour policy, as well as chairing the Mental Health in Schools panel. He has written four books about teacher training, and in 2015 he was longlisted as one of the world's top teachers in the GEMS Global Teacher Prize. In the same year he made The Huffington Post's 'Top Ten Global Bloggers' list.
He is also the Director of Tom Bennett Training, which works exclusively with the most disadvantaged students and schools in England, helping them to turn around. His online resources have been viewed over 1,200,000 times, and he is a TeacherFellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.