Dr Thomas Jones

Dr Thomas Jones is a Senior Lecturer in History. He is the programme director of Buckingham’s MA in Migration History as well as of the University’s undergraduate programmes in History.

Dr Jones is interested in the political and intellectual history of modern Europe, particularly from a transnational perspective. His forthcoming work, Liberty’s Exile: A History of Political and Religious Asylum in Britain from the Reformation to the Twentieth Century, will be published by Harvard University Press. He is a member of the Royal Historical Society, the Raphael Samuel History Centre, and is a founding member of AsilEuropeXIX, an international team engaged in building a comparative history of exile in nineteenth-century Europe (https://asileurope.huma-num.fr).

Dr Jones graduated with Distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005, having double-majored in History and International Studies. He received a first Class MA in Modern History from King’s College London in 2007 and was awarded a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2010. He joined the faculty at Buckingham in 2012, having previously taught at Cambridge, Roehampton University, and Queen Mary University of London.

Selected recent publications:

‘The Rocker-Witkop family and the closing of political asylum in Britain’, in Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, no. 61, vol. 2, December 2020, pp. 123-149. English version available at (https://cairn-int.info/journal-revue-d-histoire-du-dix-neuvieme-siecle-2020-2-page-123.htm)

‘Establishing a constitutional “right of asylum” in early nineteenth-century Britain’, in History of European Ideas, vol. 46, issue 5, May 2020, pp. 545-562.

‘A “Coup d’état” in Jersey? Rethinking the Jersey Expulsions of 1855′ in Diasporas, no. 33, vol. 1, issue ‘Éloigner et expulser les étrangers au XIXe siècle’, June 2019, pp. 137-158.

‘Définir l’asile politique en Grande-Bretagne, 1815-1870’, in Hommes et Migrations, no. 1312, issue ‘Les Mots de l’exil dans lEurope du XIXe siècle : dire, pratiquer, représenter les migrations politiques’, April-May 2018, pp. 13-22.

‘French republicanism after 1848’, in The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought, eds. Dough Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 70-93.

‘From republicanism to anarchism: fifty years of French exile publishing’, co-authored with Constance Bantman, in The Foreign Political Press in London: Politics from a Distances, eds. Constance Bantman and Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, pp. 91-111.

‘Les Révélations historiques de Louis Blanc et la mémoire de 1848 en France et en Grande-Bretagne’, in Regards sur 1848 eds. Edward Castleton and Hervé Touboul, Besançon, France: Université de Franche-Comté, 2015, pp. 115-149.

‘Rallier la république en exil: L’Homme de Ribeyrolles’, in Quand les socialistes inventaient l’avenir : presse, théories et expériences, 1825-1860, eds. Thomas Bouchet, Vincent Bourdeau, Edward Castleton, Ludovic Frobert, and François Jarrige, Paris: La Découverte, 2015, pp. 348-360.

‘The French left in exile: quarante-huitards and communards in London, 1848-1880′, co-authored with Robert Tombs, in A History of the French in London: Liberty, Equality, Opportunity, eds. Martyn Cornick and Debra Kelly, London: Institute of HIstorical Research, 2013, pp. 165-191.

Selected recent multimedia appearances and production:

BBC Radio 3, ‘Free Thinking’ programme: discussant on the 8 February 2024 episode on ‘The Greenwich Outrage’

‘Foreign nationals and internal borders in the United Kingdom during the First World War’: Online piece for the Columbia World Projects’s and Centre for History and Economics’s ‘Barriers and Borders’ project, published January 2024

‘Asylum in historical context: a conversation with Dr Thomas C Jones’, Queen Mary, University of London, 30 March 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVSz0-CP23o)

‘New Work in Intellectual History’ podcast, University of St Andrews (https://intellectualhistory.net/new-work/britain-european-civilisation-and-the-idea-of-liberty-actba)

‘Marx’s London’, audio walking tour written and hosted by Dr Jones (https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/episode-7-marxs-london/)