Henry Widdowson began his career teaching English literature at the University of Indonesia. He then worked with teachers of English for several years in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and subsequently taught at the universities of Edinburgh, London, Essex and Vienna He was a founding editor of the journal Applied Linguistics and for thirty years acted as applied linguistics adviser to Oxford University Press. He has lectured and written extensively on applied linguistics, discourse analysis and language teaching and his books include Defining Issues in English Language Teaching (2003), Text,Context,Pretext (2004) and Discourse Analysis (2007) – a book in the series Oxford Introductions to Language Study, of which he is the editor. His ‘Selected Works on Applied Linguistics’ was recently published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in Beijing. Now in relative retirement, he is Professor Emeritus, University of London, and Honorary Professor at the University of Vienna.
In June, 2015, Professor Widdowson just won The British Council LIfetime Achievement Award. His wider involvement in the ELT community, through teachers’ associations, conference presentations and his highly influential books, ensures his reputation as a mentor and friend to generations of language teachers around the world.
