Neil Mercer

Neil Mercer is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, and Director of Oracy Cambridge: the Hughes Hall Centre for Effective Spoken Communication. He is a Life Fellow of Hughes Hall, and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Before Cambridge, he was Professor of Language and Communications at the Open University. As a psychologist whose research has focused on the development of children’s spoken language and reasoning abilities, and teachers’ role in that development, he has worked extensively and internationally with teachers, researchers and educational policy makers.

In 2019 he was given the Oeuvre Award by the European Association for Research into Learning and Instruction for outstanding contributions to educational research; and for similar reasons in 2021 he was awarded the John Nisbet Fellowship by the British Educational Research Association.