James Loudon is a Senior Research Associate in the Electron Microscopy Group investigating magnetic skyrmions as part of The Skyrmion Project, a joint investigation with the universities of Durham, Warwick, Cambridge, Oxford and Southampton funded by the EPSRC. Prior to this he was a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Physics and Materials Science at Homerton College. Before that he was a postdoctoral researcher (2006-2007) at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, investigating the structure and properties of functional magnetic oxide materials using high resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy and was a Junior Research Fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge (2003-2006).

His PhD (2000-2003, received in March 2004) is entitled ‘An Investigation of the Unconventional Phases in the Lanthanum Calcium Manganite System’. The thesis describes an investigation of the unusual low temperature phase transitions which occur in (La,Ca)MnO₃, a so-called colossal-magnetoresistive (CMR) material.

James gave lectures in electron microscopy for the PhD and MPhil courses in Nanotechnology.