An historian with wide intellectual interests, Jeremy Walker's research, teaching and PhD supervision spans the conceptual history of the social sciences (e.g. political economy, ecological economics, science and technology studies), and of the natural sciences (ecology, energy physics, climate and Earth systems sciences). This he contextualises in the world history of globalisation and the efforts of democratic, environmental and land justice movements to respond to biodiversity loss and global warming through cultural change, energy transition and environmental justice reforms to government policy and international relations.

His recent monograph More Heat than Life: the Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy and Economics (2020, Palgrave) presents a panoramic history (over 14 chapters) of neoliberal economic theory and ecosystems ecology, showing how the development of the 'twin sciences' of ecology and economics was determined by their contradicting interpretations of fossil-fuelled industrial capitalism, modern energy physics (thermodynamics) and the Earth system sciences. The book provides a prehistory of the confrontation between neoliberalism and climate policy, which from the 1970s into the present of the climate emergency has increasingly come to determine our collective existence, even the future of species life on Earth.

Walker's current research focuses on the history of the petroleum industry from the early 20th century and of the international networks and organisations assembled by neoliberal intellectuals, activists, politicians, media organisations and business funders, now a permanent global infrastructure of 'free-market' think-tanks aimed at influencing public opinion, public policy, national legislation and international law, including against effective climate policy (amongst many other objectives). He has recently published the first historical overview of the Australian branch of the neoliberal think-tank network, offering a novel interpretation of the Whitlam era (1972-1975) and its consequences into the present of the climate emergency ('Freedom to Burn', 2022),

Past-director of C-SERC (Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre) based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS, he is also a scholarly member of the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN), based at Brown University (USA).