Barry has been involved in language testing for thirty years and during this time has written extensively on the subject and well as presenting his work at conferences around the world on hundreds of occasions. His work includes the development and validation of the British Council's Aptis test (2012) and more recently the conceptualization of the socio-cognitive model of test development and validation. He is the founding president of the UK Association of Language Testing and Assessment and is a visiting professor at the University of Reading in the UK and a special advisory professor to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. His work has been recognized by the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK (awarded fellowship in 2016); The Asian Association for Language Assessment (elected to fellowship in 2017); and by the government of the UK (awarded an OBE in 2019).