Robin Cormack was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Exeter College, Oxford, and gained his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London.

He wrote his dissertation on Thessaloniki after iconoclasm under the supervision of Hugo Buchthal and Cyril Mango[1] and it was the latter who suggested he should spend time at Dumbarton Oaks.

Photographs attributed to Cormack are held in the Conway Library, whose archive of primarily architectural images is being digitised under the wider Courtauld Connects project.

[3][2] After retiring from the Courtauld, Cormack held a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship 2004–06 and a scholarship at the Getty Research Institute 2005–06, and was Special Professor in Classics at the University of Nottingham 2005–08.

He gained experience, during his student days, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) where he worked under Roland Penrose and Herbert Read regularly hanging exhibitions.