Oliver joined ESRO in 2011 after four years in local government. As part of a service transformation team he developed a taste for getting to know service users: building trust, discovering what they really thought about things, and understanding public services from their perspective. It was only a matter of time until he leapt into social research, keen to develop his passion for people across myriad projects in both the public and private sectors. With his particular interest in working with and for vulnerable and hard-to-reach people, ESRO feels like Oliver’s natural home.

Both in and out of work, Oliver is a language junkie, having sharpened his tongue in French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Turkish, with Arabic on the way, and Ancient Greek and Latin still lurking in the locker (the last pair generally come in less handy for ESRO). He loves to travel and play the saxophone – sometimes, but not always, at the same time – and cycles with a certifiable passion. Other notable achievements include his recent appointment as a school governor, impending qualification as a translator, and winning an essay-writing competition with a piece about having his hair cut in Berlin – an episode he credits as having sowed the seed of his love for ethnography.