In addition to publishing under the pseudonym Robert Dugdale from 1974 to 2005, Hardy worked for thirteen years (1977–90) as an editor at Oxford University Press, first editing and commissioning in the General Books Department, then commissioning academic books as Senior Editor, Political and Social Studies. At OUP in 1980, inspired by Isaiah Berlin's insistence on the crucial role of individual thinkers in the history of ideas, he founded the Past Masters series (now absorbed into the Very Short Introductions series). His wish to publish a work of popular philosophy, "Making Names", by Andrew Malcolm, was not endorsed by OUP. This was the subject of Malcolm's landmark legal action against OUP for breach of contract. Hardy's account of this episode is told in his review of Malcolm’s book about the case. Hardy has been a Fellow of Wolfson College since 1990 (an Honorary Fellow since 2015).