Professor Sutherland is the Miriam Rothschild Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Cambridge.

He is interested in applying ecological data and models to understand conservation problems. This may involve field work, use of existing data or purely theoretical problems. He is especially interested in bird population ecology as well as the impacts of agriculture of biodiversity.

Recently he has become intrigued by understanding how decisions are made. This has involved horizon scanning to identify future issues, collation of evidence to determine which interventions are effective and then a rigorous means of weighting the evidence to guide policy and practice.