Michael Ashby is Honorary Associate Professor in the research department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences at University College London (UCL), President of the International Phonetic Association for 2019–2023, and Treasurer of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas. After graduating from Oxford, he trained in phonetics and linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and then at UCL, where he subsequently taught for 35 years. He has lectured on phonetics across the world from Chile to Japan. His publications include a widely-used textbook, Introducing phonetic science (2005), written jointly with John Maidment. He was Phonetics Editor of five successive editions of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary from 1995 to 2015. His current main research field is in the history of phonetics, and he has produced Experimental phonetics in Britain, 1890–1940 (2016) ( https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d8bbffae-8a4e-478e-ba65-0f5a5bbd66e1 )