After serving six years as an education officer in the Royal Air Force, he began his academic career at the Cardiff University, as an assistant lecturer in politics in 1966.
[5] In August 2007 he was appointed Emeritus Professor of International Relations and retired from serving as the chairman of CSTPV's advisory board but remained active in academia and policy circles.
[4] Throughout his career, which spanned five decades that saw the rise of the Irish Republican Army's bombings to the September 11, 2001 attacks, Wilkinson was a strong opponent of terrorism but adamant that democratic responses to it always be guided by the rule of law.
For example, he publicly opposed attempts to increase the period permitted to detain terrorism suspects without trial in the UK and condemned the George W. Bush administration's approach to counterterrorism, such as the Guantánamo detention camp, which he criticized as flouting "international law and criminal justice".
[4] He appreciated it as a multi-disciplinary and "ever-changing" research topic that was especially rewarding because he was a part of "a small band of pioneers in this almost totally neglected field" in his early career.