Until his death in 2010, Barnes held the post of Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Fellow of Churchill College.
Previous positions include faculty posts in social anthropology at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University in Canberra, He also was associated with Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, University College London, St John's College, Cambridge, Balliol College, Oxford and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute.
John A. Barnes, among others, is known to be the first to use the concept of social networks in a scientific context.
This was in 1954, in the article "Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish",[1] in which he presented the result of nearly two years of fieldwork in Bremnes on Bømlo, Norway.
Barnes was offered a fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge by Dick Tizard.