Professor Presley was Professor of Economics from 1984 to 2004 when he was appointed Emeritus professor.
John Presley began his academic career at Loughborough in December 1968 as lecturer jointly between Social Sciences and Industrial Engineering/Management Dept. In 1976 he became a senior lecturer, reader in 1981, before becoming the founding director of The Banking Centre (1984-89) He was Head of the Economics Dept. 1991-96; In 1979-80 he was Senior economic adviser to the Ministry of Planning, Saudi Arabia, then chief economist to Saudi British Bank (HSBC) 1979-2006, visiting scholar Harvard University 1982, visiting professorial fellow Nottingham 1989-90; head of Group Training at Midland Bank (p/t) 1985-90.
As adviser to the DTI FROM 1992, he was a member for the Committee for Middle East Trade (1992-2000), and chairman of the Area Action Committee for The Arab Gulf (1993 -8). He was also a Board Director of The Arab British Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s. In 2002, he won the Islamic Development Bank Prize in Islamic Economics and Finance. He has also worked on projects for The World Bank, IMF, DTI, British Aerospace, Wincott Foundation et al. He set up The Saudi Economic and Business Research Centre in London, funded by the DTI in 1992. He remains an associate director of Maxwell Stamp PLC, a leading economic consultancy.
John Presley has written or edited 15 books on European Monetary Union, history of economics and Islamic Finance; some have been translated into Japanese, Farsi and Arabic; articles have been published in The Economic Journal, Applied Economics, Scottish Journal, Manchester School amongst other journals over the last 40 years.