Robert Clarke, 1950-2020

Robert Clarke was born in Cheltenham in March 1950. He studied chemistry at the University of East Anglia from 1968 to 1971 and later completed an MSc in Business Information Services at Keele University from 1994 to 1998.

He taught chemistry in Walsall from 1971 to 1974 and in Birmingham from 1974 to 1978. After working as an information and advisory officer at Leicester Polytechnic from 1978 to 1980, he joined Birmingham City University.

Clarke served as Principal Lecturer in the School of Computing and Digital Technology from 1980 to 2010. He was a founding member of the Department of Computing and helped establish its first degree, a BSc in Computing Information Systems. After taking voluntary redundancy in 2010, he continued as a consultant and taught at the university until 2016.

Clarke worked with Dr Thomas Lancaster on academic integrity. They co-authored Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites. Dr Lancaster presented the paper at the 2nd International Plagiarism Conference in Newcastle/Gateshead in June 2006; Clarke was not present at the conference. Their paper coined the term contract cheating.

The pair continued their work in 2007, including Establishing a Systematic Six-Stage Process for Detecting Contract Cheating. Their joint publications addressed plagiarism, essay mills and methods for detecting contract cheating.

Robert Clarke died on 4 March 2020.

His pioneering work continues to influence contract-cheating research, academic integrity practice and the support offered to students. The term and investigative approach he helped establish gave researchers and educators a clearer way to understand outsourcing and respond to it.