Nicholas Thomas

Nicholas Thomas was born in Sydney in 1960. He visited the Pacific Islands first in 1984 to research his PhD thesis on the Marquesas Islands, and later worked in Fiji and New Zealand. He has written many acclaimed historical and anthropological books, but also collaborated in exhibition and book experiments with artists including John Pule and Mark Adams.

His many books include Entangled Objects (1991), a celebrated exploration of the changing lives of things in the Pacific; Oceanic Art (1995), an innovative survey; Discoveries: the voyages of Captain Cook (2003); and Islanders: the Pacific in the Age of Empire (2010) which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize.

Thomas's exhibitions have included Skin Deep: a History of Tattooing for the National Maritime Museum, London, and Cook's Sites, for the Museum of Sydney (both of which toured extensively) as well as Kauage: Artist of Papua New Guinea and several other exhibitions at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, where he has been Director since 2006.

Nicholas Thomas lives in London with his partner Annie Coombes, and their son.