Robert Hampson has an international reputation as a Conrad scholar and critic. He is the author of three monographs on Conrad, the last of which, Conrad’s Secrets, won the Adam Gillon Award from the Joseph Conrad Society of America. His most recent work is the critical biography, Joseph Conrad, in Reaktion Books' Critical Lives series. He has also edited and introduced a number of Conrad’s works, edited collections of essays on Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, and written numerous essays on Conrad. He was awarded the Ian P. Watt Prize (2017) for excellence in Conrad Studies.

He has been publishing poetry since the 1970s. He co-edited the influential poetry magazine Alembic and has also published critical work on poetry. His collection reworked disasters (ksf, 2013) was long-listed for the Forward Prize.