[citation needed] On his return to Britain in 1988, he was awarded the Cripps Hall Residential Tutorship at the University of Nottingham where he completed an MA in Modern English Literature.

[8][failed verification] Doug worked at the University of Central England as visiting professor of poetry and poet-in-residence; he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

[citation needed] In 2001 the Orange Studio commissioned a collection, No I am Not Prince Hamlet, integrating themes of home, familiarity and cultural identity.

In 2003, Doug was commissioned by Birmingham City University to produce a series of short elegies to commemorate the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York.

Doug has written a wide range of papers including "The Business of Poetry" for the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education for their conference "The Narrative Practitioner", to the prospective essay "Gandhi: a Punjabi perspective" for The London Review of Books, and "The British Schools' National Curriculum: English and the politics of teaching poetry from different cultures and traditions" for The Journal of Curriculum Studies.