Roger Kitching holds the Chair of Ecology within the Australian School of Environmental Studies at Griffith University. His research group currently operates as part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Management. He is an insect ecologist with broad interests in the behaviour, populations and communities of insects in natural ecosystems. He is particularly interested in Old-World rainforests and is engaged in long term projects studying the biodiversity of these systems.

He has worked and continues to work in Australia, Borneo, New Guinea and other regional centres. Professor Kitching chairs the Australian federal government's Biodiversity Advisory Council and is a member of the National Heritage Trust advisory committee. He previously held the Chair of Ecosystem Management at the University of New England and was special commissioner on the Resource Assessment Commission's Coronation Hill inquiry.

Kitching has authored over 130 scientific papers. He is the author of 'Systems Ecology' (UQPress 1983) and 'Container Habitats and Food Webs' (CUP 2000); co-author of 'Insect Ecology' (UQPress 1984); and editor or co-editor of 'The Ecology of Pests: Some Australian Case Histories' (CSIRO 1981), 'The Ecology of Exotic Animals and Plants in Australia' (Wiley 1986), ' The Ecology of Australia's Wet Tropics' (Surrey Beatty 1988) and 'The Biology of Australian Butterflies'( CSIRO 1999).