Joseph Barker researches magnetic materials and their applications, specialising in the modelling of magnetic materials using large scale computer simulations, calculating the thermodynamic and dynamical behaviour, including non-equilibrium behaviour and phase transitions. His recent interests have been in insulator spintronics and spincaloritroncs. He has also been making methodological advances to include more quantum effects into classical spin calculation to make results quantitatively accurate across temperature ranges. Joseph studied his PhD at the University of York. In 2014 he moved to Japan as an assistant professor in the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University. In 2018 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship which he holds in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds.