Nicholas Thomas first visited the Pacific in 1984 to undertake research in the Marquesas Islands. He has since travelled extensively across the Pacific, and written on Indigenous histories, empire and art; his books include Islanders: the Pacific in the age of empire (2012), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, and Gauguin and Polynesia (2024). Oceania, which Thomas co-curated with Peter Brunt for the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris in 2018–19, was acclaimed as a landmark exhibition. He has also written about contemporary art, colonial heritage and museum practice for the Financial Times, the Art Newspaper and Apollo among other papers and journals.

He is Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where he has worked in support of the repatriation of artefacts, to Australia and elsewhere. He lives in London and in the Corbières, in the south of France.

Top Titles

• Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire (2012)

• Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (2021)

• Gauguin and Polynesia (2024)