Alex has a variety of teaching and research interests around environmental policy, rural land use sustainability and innovation. He teaches subjects on transdisciplinary practice and industry innovation and is the Director of Teaching Learning for Transdisciplinary School at UTS. He has previously taught on environmental management, sustainable engineering and renewable energy policy.

Alex's research focuses on community engagement and policy options for emerging practices that offer potential environmental benefits. He has recently undertaken research on collaborative carbon farming funded by AgriFutures Australia, as well as research into the social licence of the sharing economy with colleagues from the UTS Business School. Other completed projects cover co-benefits of carbon farming, landholder collaboration for landscape-scale conservation, revegetation strategies and low-carbon tourism. In 2016 he released his first book, exploring ways in which the production of woody bioenergy crops can create incentives to restore degraded land, while addressing concerns around food security and climate change. His research has been published in the Journal of Environmental Management, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Science and Policy, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Annals of Tourism Research, Biomass and Bioenergy, Rural Society and The Rangeland Journal.

Prior to joining UTS, Alex was based at UNSW for 10 years, teaching a range of subjects and working on research projects on landholder collaboration, low-carbon tourism and revegetation. From 2005 to 2008 he worked on the FATE (Future of Australia's Threatened Ecosystems) Program looking at commercial uses for Australian native species that could contribute to conservation goals, including kangaroos in the rangelands and multi-species plantations for bioenergy and other products. Prior to this, he spent three years at the Department of Environment and Heritage in Canberra (which has since undergone at least two name changes), working on international trade in wild plants and animals. His undergraduate studies were undertaken in Environmental Science at the University of Wollongong.