John Furlong, OBE is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College.

From 2003 – 2009 he was head of the Department of Education at Oxford having previously held posts at Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea and Cambridge Universities. A former President of the British Educational Research Association, he was elected as an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2004.

His current research interests centre on both teacher education and educational research policy and the links between them. He has been author of a number of government reports on teacher education over recent years – Wales (2007), Brunei (2008), the Republic of Ireland (2013), Northern Ireland (2014) and Wales (2015). He is currently an adviser to the Welsh Government on Initial Teacher Education and Chair of the Teacher Education Accreditation Board for Wales. In 2013-14 he was Chair of the BERA-RSA Inquiry into Research and Teacher Education. He was a member of the 2008 and 2014 RAE/REF sub-panels in Education in the UK, and Convenor of the Education Panel for the Hong Kong RAE 2014. In 2015, his book, Education – an anatomy of the discipline, was awarded first prize by the British Society for Educational Studies, for the best educational research of the year; his most recent book (edited with Geoff Whitty), Knowledge and the Study of Education – an international exploration, was published by Symposium Books in June 2017. John was awarded the OBE for services to research in education and advice to government in 2017.