Stuart moved to Oxford in 1979 and worked with Louise Johnson on the structure of the enzyme glycogen phosphorylase before moving in 1981 to work at the Institute of Biophysics in Beijing, China, with Liang Dong-Cai on insulin. Returning to Oxford in 1983 to work with Johnson he then in 1985 set up his own research group in the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, focused mainly on virus–receptor interactions and virus assembly. In 1999 Stuart led the establishment of the Division of Structural Biology, in the Nuffield Department of Medicine.
