He was an honorary professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University, United Kingdom.
On 26 January 2006, Barton's opinion on an article entitled The struggle to keep basic skills up to scratch was published on The Guardian.
[8] Barton's research focuses on all aspects of language online, including the interaction of words and images, multilingual issues, changes to vernacular practices and learning.
Their study showed that people draw upon a large array of multi-lingual and multi-modal resources to project new global identities.
In addition, they argued that the tradition of literacy studies research, drawn on by all the projects described in their journal article, provides the theoretical and methodological resources to approach such aspects of academic writing development across the lifespan.