[1] He has been the John Adams (Fulbright) Professor of American Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands; a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Center at Bellagio, Italy; and a resident fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies in Monticello, Virginia; and was the 2012–2013 Frank H. Kenan Fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
He has received teaching awards from the Associated Student Government of Miami University, the College of Arts and Science of Miami University, and the Ohio Academy of History, and was a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians.
Cayton has been called the "premier modern historian of the American Midwest" and is also well known for his work on British North America.
In 2013 he published Love at the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change, 1793-1818.
Cayton wrote with Fred Anderson The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (2005).