Thomas Smith Biography

Dr Thomas Smith is a graduate of Kent and London universities; he gained his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2013, where he won a Reid Research Scholarship. Thomas was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2017 and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2021 and holds honorary research fellowships at Royal Holloway, the University of Kent, and Oxford Brookes University. A former Lecturer in Medieval History at Trinity College, Dublin, he is one of the most prolific historians working on the Middle Ages.

He has been the recipient of a number of major research funding awards, including a Scouloudi Junior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, London, a Study Abroad Fellowship at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (Leverhulme Trust), and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Leeds.

A leading specialist on the crusades, Thomas is the author of Rewriting the First Crusade (2024), Curia and Crusade (2017) and, with Dr Susan Edgington, The Deeds of the Franks who Conquered Jerusalem, an edition and translation published by Oxford University Press. In 2018, Curia and Crusade received the Highly Commended award in the British Records Association’s Janette Harley Prize. He has edited seven other academic books and written more than 40 articles and book chapters, including for the 'Cambridge History of the Crusades' and 'The New Cambridge History of Britain'. 

Thomas has served as historical consultant on the TV series ‘Vikings’ and made media appearances on podcasts including ‘Gone Medieval’ (History Hit Network) and for ‘Medievalists.net’. He has delivered lectures on medieval history across Britain, Ireland, the United States, Australia, Japan, Germany, Austria, France, and Israel.

After lecturing at the universities of London, Leeds, Kent, Dublin, and Munich, Thomas currently holds the position of Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge at Rugby School, where he has taught History since 2019.