[6][7] He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989, specializing in international relations and conflict theory under the supervision of Hayward Alker.

[8] Homer-Dixon began his academic career at the University of Toronto in 1990 where he led several research projects examining links between environmental stress and violence in poor countries.

[17] In the early 1990s, at the University of Toronto, Homer-Dixon led a team of researchers that pioneered study of the links between environmental stress and violent conflict.

[18][19] Two of his articles in the Harvard journal International Security identified underlying mechanisms by which scarcities of natural resources like cropland and fresh water could contribute to insurgency, ethnic clashes, terrorism, and genocide in poor countries.

[6][9] This research culminated in his book Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, which won the Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association.

Homer-Dixon also said that "Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state" and that the oil sands industry "is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don't like.