Voas worked in the private sector for a number of years and also spent extended periods outside the UK, particularly in France, the United States, and Bulgaria.
Academic career He returned to academic life in 1998, first as a researcher at the University of Liverpool and subsequently as a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. He was awarded a Simon Research Fellowship at the University of Manchester in 2003 and remained there for eight years, first in the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research and later in the Institute for Social Change. In 2007, he was promoted to
professor and given a chair in the Institute for Social Change, later merged into the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research. Voas was Professor of Population Studies in the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex from November 2011 to January 2016. He took up his present position at UCL in February 2016. ==References==