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Professor Mary James was awarded a BERA lifetime achievement

Our Fellow-Commoner, Professor Mary James, was awarded one of BERA (The British Educational Research Association) three lifetime achievement 'For her outstanding contribution to educational research and its application for the improvement of practice and public benefit'. The award, given to her at the 2019 annual conference, is named the 'John Nisbet Fellowship', after the first President.

BERA is a membership association and learned society committed to advancing research quality, building research capacity and fostering research engagement. It aims to inform the development of policy and practice by promoting the best quality evidence produced by educational research. This year's annual conference was held at the university of Manchester.

Another recipient of the award was her close colleague Professor Andrew Pollard, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College. Together they were asked to give a keynote at the conference in the form of a conversation. It was entitled 'Head, Heart, Hands, Happenstance and Horror: reflections on being educational researchers'. The session was recorded and can now be watched on YouTube.

Mary James, Fellow-Commoner, retired in 2014 from her positions as Professor and Associate Director of Research at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. In the 2000s, she directed the ESRC ‘Learning How to Learn’ project, within the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), of which she was Deputy Director. From 2011 to 2013 she was President of the British Educational Research Association. In 2011 she was a member of the Expert Panel appointed by the UK Coalition Government to assist the review the National Curriculum in England. She has been an adviser to the Hong Kong Education Bureau since 2000, and to the NordForsk ‘Education for Tomorrow’ programme from 2013-17. She was a member of the UK Assessment Reform Group from 1992-2010, and a non-executive director of Bell Educational Services Ltd from 2013-15. She has published more than 100 books, chapters and articles and, in 2013, her ‘selected works’ were published by Routledge. She began her career as a teacher in three secondary schools.