 In 1999-2000 he was Hartley Fellow at Southampton University and in 2004 was appointed Academic Director for Lifelong Learning at Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University.In 2006 he was awarded the title Professor.Gibson has been described as ‘one of that school of ecclesiastical historians… which in the late twentieth century has given fresh impetus and vitality to the revisionist view of the eighteenth-century Church...’ (John Guy in "Journal of Welsh Religious History", 1997) Gibson’s championing of the ‘optimistic’ view of the eighteenth century Church has drawn criticism from historians.