His research interests include urban planning and governance, urban social policy, disability studies, and environmental theory and policy.

He has authored, co-authored and co-edited several books and has written numerous opinion pieces for the Irish Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Courier-Mail and the Canberra Times. He is co-author (with Nicholas Low) of Justice, Society and Nature: an Exploration of Political Ecology (1998), which received the prestigious Harold and Margaret Sprout award in 1999 from the International Studies Association. In 2006 Gleeson's Australian Heartlands: Making Space for Hope in the Suburbs won the inaugural John Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.

Professor Gleeson has worked professionally in a range of countries, including Ireland, Britain, Germany, New Zealand, the USA and Australia. He was previously a member of the Board of the Queensland Urban Land Development Authority. He has most recently been appointed as a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Brendan Gleeson's 2010 publications include; an edited volume A Climate for Growth: Planning South-East Queensland and a solo bookLifeboat Cities.

He currently lives in Maynooth, Ireland.