 In 1962 Higginson became an Associate professor at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham and in 1965 he was appointed to a chair in Civil Engineering in what is now the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at the University of Durham.His research interest was hydrodynamic lubrication and tribology, later extending to bio-engineering.In the 1990s he served as chair of the engineering board of the Science and Engineering Research Council, the major grant-awarding body in UK academia.