Born in Vancouver and raised in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Willis took his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Victoria where he studied with Siri Gunasinghe and Alan Gowans. Travelling to the University of Chicago, he studied with J. A. B. van Buitenen and Pramod Chandra, receiving his doctoral degree in 1988 after periods in India and Cyprus.
He is currently leading Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State, a project funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Museum. He joined the British Museum in 1994 after teaching at State University of New York New Paltz. He was the curator of the early south Asian and Himalayan collections in the Department of Asia from 1994 until 2014 at which time he became Corresponding Principal Investigagtor of the Beyond Boundaries project
Willis"s main research interest has been the cultural, political and religious history of north India from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries.
He has published on the inscriptions of central India and its early temple architecture. Concurrently Willis developed an interest in Tibet and published a popular book on the subject.
Willis is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University.
