After postdoctoral fellowships at the ETH, Zürich with Albert Eschenmoser, funded by a Royal Society-Swiss National Foundation Fellowship, and at the University of Cambridge with Jack Lewis, he was appointed to a senior demonstratorship at the University of Edinburgh in 1982. He was subsequently promoted to lecturer, reader and then professor, and in 1995 was appointed to the University of Nottingham as head and professor of inorganic chemistry. He served as head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham from 1999 to 2005, and as executive dean of the Faculty of Science (2011–2015). In 2015 he moved to his current position as vice-president and dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering and professor of chemistry at the University of Manchester.
He has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand and the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, and has published over 540 publications and patents. 
His early independent research focussed on the chemistry of transition metal thioether and aza macrocyclic complexes with particular focus on the stabilisation of unusual oxidation state species. This work led to the isolation and characterisation of unique mononuclear M(I)/(III) (M = Ni, Pd, Pt) and M(II) (M = Ag, Au, Rh, Ir) complexes. His current research focuses on the development of new advanced functional materials, particularly metal-organic framework materials for selective fuel and toxic gas capture, purification and catalysis.