While attending UBC, he took the opportunity to spend one academic year at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, his first exposure to China.

He completed his Ph.D. thesis in 1978, titled The "Chu Shu" chapter of the Huai-Nan-Tzu: The sources and orientation of its political thought.

While a member of the faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), Ames joined Eliot Deutsch, already a prominent academic and advocate of Chinese and comparative philosophy, and others to continue the tradition begun by Charles A. Moore and Wing-Tsit Chan to establish UHM as the hub for non-Western and comparative philosophy and intellectual exchange in the United States.

[3] He also served as Director for the Center for Chinese Studies at UHM and Co-Director (with Peter D. Hershock) for the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP), and as Director and Co-Director of the East-West Philosophers' Conferences, the largest gathering of non-Western and comparative philosophers, with as many as 300 presenters, held in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2011, and 2016.

[5] Ames has written around 100 scholarly articles, published in prominent academic journals in the United States and abroad.