H began to concentrate on environmental issues in 1983 while at Queen's University Belfast and was closely associated with Friends of the Earth, the Ulster Wildlife Trust and Northern Ireland Environment Link.

In 2006, Yearley became director of the Genomics Forum, a research institute funded by the ESRC.

At the Forum, he focused primarily on environmental aspects, such as issues regarding synthetic biology, and on new ventures in public engagement with the science and technologies of genomics.

[citation needed][3] In 2010, Yearley was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

[4] Yearley is on the editorial boards of the journals Social Studies of Science and Nature and Culture,[5][6] and he co-edited The SAGE Dictionary of Sociology.