As a member of the Senior Management Team at Butterfly Conservation he oversaw the delivery and directed the work of the Society with a principal role in the Conservation, Monitoring and Resources directorates. Much of his work involved external liaison with partner organisations from the NGO, Academic and Government communities both within and outside the UK.

He has extensive experience of Lepidoptera conservation, survey work, recording schemes and the uses of such data as well as extensive publicity and media experience.

His own applied research has focused on the importance of landscape scale conservation. In the last few years he has co-supervised PhD students from Oxford, Liverpool, Exeter, Cardiff and Northampton Universities on various topics including landscape scale conservation of moths in an agricultural setting, the science underpinning the reintroduction of the checkered skipper to England, pesticide toxicity studies and the ecology of the Lulworth skipper. Research on the Chequered Skipper has including the ecology and status of the introduced population, the role of museum specimens and the genetics of both the source and introduced populations and the role of Wolbachia in its success.

Keenly aware of the need to communicate between the scientific, conservation and volunteer worlds he has organised four international conferences during his career with a combined participation of over 700 people.

See Nigel's publications on Google Scholar.