In 2018 Clarke, alongside his colleagues Dr Diane Rodgers and Andrew Robinson, launched the Centre for Contemporary Legend research (CCL) at Sheffield Hallam University.
[6][7] In 2024 the UKRI Arts & Humanities Research Council awarded Clarke 'Catalyst' funding for a 2-year project that will create a National Folklore Survey for England.
[8] [9] Since the 1990s much of Clarke's journalism has concentrated on investigations of British government policy on UFOs/UAPs, working from documents opened at the UK National Archives.
From 1998 he used the UK's Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) to gain access to closed UFO files held by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
[13] Between 2008 and 2013 Clarke acted as the media consultant and spokesperson for the Open Government project that oversaw the transfer of 210 public records on UFOs from the Ministry of Defence to The National Archives.
[19] In 2022 Clarke was instrumental in both discovering and publishing the only extant original photograph of the infamous Calvine UFO sighting, along with the only contemporary witness account of the event provided by former RAF press officer Craig Lindsay.
His books on folklore, Fortean studies and contemporary legend include Twilight of the Celtic Gods (with Andy Roberts, 1996); The Angel of Mons (2004); and Britain’s X-traordinary Files (2014).