SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW THE SCHOOL OF HISTORY & CLASSICS, THE UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA
Professor Thomson describes himself as a cultural historian and palaeographer. Most of his research has focussed on intellectual and cultural life in twelfth-century England, with special attention to Benedictine monasteries and men of learning, their books and libraries. Since the early 1980s he hasbeen invited to make descriptive catalogues of manuscripts currently held by English institutions: the cathedrals of Lincoln, Hereford and Worcester and, currently, Merton College Oxford. He has also edited and translated medieval Latin texts, above all, the historical works of the monk William of Malmesbury (d. c. 1142), and contributed to the history of the Latin classical tradition in Western Europe before c. 1500. At the present time, apart from working on the Merton manuscripts, he isinvolved in two projects sponsored by the British Academy: the volume on Oxford for the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, and the Oxford component of the Corpus of British Manuscripts Containing Commentaries on Aristotle. With Professor Nigel Morgan, he is editor of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. 2 1100-1400, and together with Professor Emeritus Michael Winterbottom he is continuing to publish editions of William of Malmesbury's works for the series Oxford Medieval Texts.

Professor Thomson offers assistance to the postgraduate membership of the Resource Unit, making available his considerable experience of the first-hand autopsy of medieval manuscripts, of editing and translating medieval Latin texts, and in what can be known of medieval book-collections and of the dissemination and descent of written material.

Work in Progress
~ Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in the Library of Merton College Oxford. The catalogue will be in book form, providing an account of the physical description, contents and history of each book, together with an introductory essay on the growth and use of the collection (fcms.its.utas.edu.au/arts/history/project.asp?lProjectId=932).
~ Memory and Memorial: Uses of the Past in English History, c.1100-1500. Investigates the ways in which medieval England remembered its past. A major part of the project is an inventory of historical materials available within England during this period: their existence, location, and to some extent usage.

Select Publications

Books

• Books and Learning in Twelfth-Century England:  The Ending of ‘Alter Orbis’.   The Lyell Lectures for 2000-2001 (Walkern: The Red Gull Press, 2006.
• (With C. Mews and C. Nederman), editor of Rhetoric and Renewal in Medieval Europe, 1100-1540; Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).
• (With M. Winterbottom), William of Malmesbury, Saints' Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract (Oxford Medieval Texts: Clarendon Press, 2002).
• A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester CathedralLibrary  (D. S. Brewer for the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral, Woodbridge, 2001)
• The Bury Bible (Boydell: Woodbridge, 2001)
• William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, vol. 1 with R. A. B. Mynors and M. Winterbottom (text and transl.), vol. 2 (General introduction and commentary) (Oxford Medieval Texts: The Clarendon Press, 1998-9)
• England and the 12th-Century Renaissance (Variorum Collected Studies Ser. CS620, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot, 1998)
• (With R. Sharpe, J. Carley and A. G. Watson), English Benedictine Libraries; The Shorter Catalogues (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 4: British Library Publications for The British Academy, 1996)
• (With R. A. B. Mynors) Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library (D. S. Brewer for the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral (Woodbridge, 1993)
• Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (D. S. Brewer for the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral: Woodbridge, 1989)
• Alexander Nequam, Speculum Speculationum (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 11: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1988)
• Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066-1235, 2 vols. (Brewer: Woodbridge, 1982, rev ed. 1985).

Recent Publications and in Press

• (With M. Winterbottom), William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, 2 vols. (Oxford Medieval Texts: Clarendon Press).  In press.
• ‘William of Malmesbury’, in The Encyclopedia of the Crusades, ed. Alan V. Murray (4 vols., ABC-Clio: Santa Barbara, CAL, 2006).
  
• ‘The Place of  Germany in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, in Manuscripts and Monastic  Culture, ed. A. Beach, Medieval Church Studies 13, Brepols, Turnhout 2007.
• ‘The Reception of the Writings of Hugh of St Victor in Medieval England’, in Bibel und Exegese in Sankt Viktor zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Rahmen, hg. von Rainer Berndt (CorpusVictorinum. Instrumenta), Berlin 2007.
• (With N. J. Morgan) General Editor of, and contributor to A History of the Book in Britain 2:  The Manuscript Book c.1100-1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
• ‘The Use of the Vernacular in Manuscripts from Worcester Cathedral Priory’, Transactions of the Worcester Archaeological Society 20 (2006), 113-119.
• ‘William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited’, in Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose; Essays in Honour of Michael Winterbottom, ed. J. Adams and T. Reinhardt (The British Academy, 2005), 383-93.
• ‘Minor Manuscript Decoration from the West of England in the Twelfth Century’, in Reading Texts and Images. Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage in honour of Margaret M. Manion, ed. B. Muir (University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 2002), pp. 19-34.
• ‘Richard Southern on the twelfth-century intellectual world’ (R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe [2 vols., Oxford, 1995, 2001]), Journal of Religious History 26 (2002), 264-73.
• ‘Newly-Discovered Fragments of Music at Worcester Cathedral: A Preliminary Account’, Interpreting and Collecting Fragments of Medieval Books, ed. L. Brownrigg and M. Smith (Los Altos Hills and London, 2000), pp. 89-95.
• ‘Serlo of Wilton and the Schools of Oxford’, Medium Ævum  68 (1999), 1-12.