He is professor of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (SHESC) at Arizona State University (ASU).
Silk (who is also a professor in SHESC at ASU), he wrote the textbook How Humans Evolved.
From 1980 to 1984, he was assistant professor of the Department of Forestry and Environmental Science at Duke University.
From 1988 to 2012, Boyd was on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Anthropology.
He is currently a professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.