Nicholas Thomas

Nicholas Jeremy Thomas (born 1960) is an Australian-born anthropologist, Professor of Historical Anthropology, and Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge since 2006, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 2007.

Career Thomas was born in Australia in 1960.

He was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1997, and around that time was also the inaugural Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research (CCR) at the Australian National University. In 2003 Thomas was listed as being a Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Thomas was elected to the British Academy in 2005, and became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2007.

Current positions he is Professor of Historical Anthropology and Director at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, a member of the Conseil d’orientation scientifique of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris as well as the International Advisory Board of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

Awards and honours Thomas was the 1995 winner of the Max Crawford Medal. He was awarded the 2010 Wolfson History Prize for his book Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire.

Selected publications Gauguin and Polynesia (2024) Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire (2010) Rauru: Tene Waitere, Maori Carving, Colonial History (2008), with Mark Adams Hiapo: Past and present in Niuean barkcloth (2005), with John Pule, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (2003) Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture (1999) Oceanic Art (World of Art) (1995), Entangled Objects (1991)