Rob is an evolutionary biologist and population ecologist based at the University of Oxford.

He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Queensland and a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

His work examines the drivers of demographic variation in order to determine which functional traits may predict the risk of local extinction of endangered species and the potential for invasion of alien species. He uses a multitude of research approaches to explore these ecological generalities, including fieldwork in Australia, Europe and the USA, and comparative analyses with large datasets. Rob works with researchers in CEED Theme D, exploring plasticity in the range of life history strategies that plant and animal species may exhibit, as well as its underlying mechanisms. His development of mathematical tools to apply to the demographic analyses of large datasets, with the specific goals to examine the drivers of species invasion and local extinction, contributes to CEED research in Theme E.

In June 2015, Rob convened a CEED workshop entitled "The era of big data hits conservation science", and he was also recently involved in the CEED workshop "Species Distribution Models and Demography". He is the leader of two open-access datasets (www.compadre-db.org) and co-developer of R packages to model the population dynamics of animal and plant species (e.g. http://ipmpack.r-forge.r-project.org; https://github.com/jonesor/compadreDB/tree/master/Mage). Rob was recently recognised by the Ecological Society of America as an Early Career Fellow (http://www.esa.org/esa/about/esa-awards/esa-awards/esa-fellows-program/esa-fellows/), and he is the winner of the 2016 BES Elton Award.