Colin Wilson is an outstanding field-focussed geologist, who has made world-class contributions to understanding explosive volcanism and crustal magmatism, based on uniquely detailed data sets gathered from historic and prehistoric eruption deposits. His studies of explosive volcanism, particularly the eruption and emplacement of pyroclastic flows and ignimbrites, have established many fundamental new ideas on large-scale hazardous volcanic activity and opened up new concepts in quantifying prehistoric eruptions. He has combined his field-focussed data with innovative analytical approaches in comprehensive studies of the dynamics of large (‘super-eruption’) silicic magma chambers in modern volcanoes.

He is a recipient of the Wager Medal of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2001 and of the American Geophysical Union in 2006.