He was Oakeshott Junior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1995 to 1998 before moving to the University of Glasgow from 1998 to 2003 where he was Lecturer and then Reader in English Literature.
Perry's research interests lie mainly in the field of English Romantic poetry and thought, in particular in the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth.
His other academic interest is in post-Romantic English poetry, in particular in the writings of Tennyson, Eliot, Auden, Larkin and the writers influenced by them.
He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and other publications.
As of 2021 he is working on an intellectual biography of W. H. Auden for Bloomsbury and on a volume of essays about poetry, Turning Verses, for Princeton University Press.