Oliver completed his PhD with Professor Douglas Fearon at the University of Cambridge in 2009, investigating the developmental pathway of memory CD8+ T cells. Following this, he joined the laboratory of Professor Jason Cyster at The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) as a postdoctoral fellow, where his focus turned to B cells. Oliver returned to the UK in 2015 to start his independent group at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WIMM), University of Oxford, where he has been based every since.

The Bannard group aims to the mechanisms shaping humoral immune responses, with a particular interest in germinal centres.