After careers in construction with the John Brown Group, investment management with the Man Group and local Government, leading Westminster City Council, Colin began an academic career as a Senior Fellow in the Price School of Public Policy at University of Southern California, and as a DCI Fellow at Stanford in 2018-19.

He was awarded his PhD with Westminster in 2023. His doctoral research assessed how the media and politicians talked to one another in the UK, France Germany, and Switzerland during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research indicated evidence of links between political systems of the country and media output during the crisis.

His current research develops this theme by studying how the Swedish media dealt with the subject, in the context of a very different epidemiological approach to the pandemic.