David Watkin is active as a teacher and writer.
He is especially interested in asking what musicology can bring to performance. He is passionate about sharing this curiostiy with audiences and students alike. As the New Grove Dictionary of Music article on him puts it, has "a passionate belief in the juxtaposition of scholarship and musicianship."

He has given talks and classes and coached at conservatoires all over Britain and in Europe and currently coaches Chamber Music at the RSAMD, Glasgow. His article ‘Beethoven and the Cello’ was published by Cambridge University Press in Performing Beethoven ed. R Stowell and he has written numerous articles about nineteenth-century performance practice for The Strad as well as book reviews. He has written numerous concert programme notes, CD liner notes and enjoys giving pre-concert talks..

His work on the eighteenth-century practice of realising figured bass (improvising chordal accompaniments) on the cello began life as part of a dissertation at Cambridge. As well as resulting in many performances and several recordings, he has published an article about this in Early Music and has given a Symposium and performance at the Utrecht Early Music Festival and lectured and taught at a continuo symposium at Bern Hochschule. His publications have had numerous citations and been included in the bibliographies of many books and academic articles including New Grove Dictionary (see below).

He was invited by leading expert Prof. Clive Brown to give a lecture as part of his Conference at Leeds University, and then to introduce and deliver a lecture on his behalf at the Library of Congress, Washington. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Leeds University Centre for Historically Informed Performance.