Robert Cribb grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and spent much time as a child wandering the bush and the Barrier Reef with his botanist parents. After completing his undergraduate studies in Asian History at the University of Queensland, he took his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with a thesis on Jakarta during the Indonesian revolution, 1945-1949. After graduating, he taught at Griffith University and the University of Queensland (both in Brisbane) and as guest lecturer at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. He held research positions at the Australian National University, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, where he was also director for two years. He re-joined the Australian National University at the beginning of 2003.

Robert Cribb's research interests focus mainly on Indonesia, though he has some interest in other parts of Southeast Asia (especially Malaysia and Burma/Myanmar) and in Inner Asia. The themes of his research are: mass violence and crime; national identity; environmental politics; and historical geography. Current research projects include: the origins of massacre in Indonesia; 'Puppet states revisited: Empire and Sovereign Subordination in Modern Asia' (with Li Narangoa); and War crimes and the Japanese Military, 1941 - 1945  (with Sandra Wilson).