Prf Ben Oakley

Professional biography

Ben originally established the Sport and Fitness qualifications at the Open University in 2007, having previously lectured at Portsmouth and Southampton Solent Universities. Formerly he worked as National Coach in windsurfing including attending two Olympic Games. His teaching expertise in online learning includes a distinctive approach to work-related study. This has been deployed in a writing online content for a range of courses and platforms beyond the Open University for clients such as Sport England, FIFA and UNICEF and most recently he was lead academic editor for the FIFA Guardians Safeguarding Diploma.

His academic research (1997-2003) originally focused on sport policy and in particular the development of elite sport systems in different countries. More recently his enquiry has focused on articles and publications on coach development (2019), the psychology of athletic development (2021) and the evolution of windsurfing (2024). He has published six sole author or edited collection books for a range of publishers including Bloomsbury and Routledge. Ben has been an OU academic consultant for BBC and Channel 4 sport related programmes, written for the BBC Sport website and an interviewee on Radio 4 Today.