Thomas H. Ford is Associate Professor of English at La Trobe University and a historian of literature in modern society. His most recent book, Barron Field in New South Wales (2023), which he co-authored with Justin Clemens, won the Walter McRae Russell Award for the best book on Australian literature. His other books include Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air (2018), which was awarded the British Association for Romantic Studies prize for best first book, and How to Read a Poem: Seven Steps (2021).

Tom has published more than 40 scholarly book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, including on such topics as bad poetry, aesthetic theory and cultural atmospheres. His research has been supported by over $2 million in competitve grant funding, most recently an ARC Future Fellowship on the poetry of colonial Australia. He is President of the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia.

Tom is currently completing a book titled Dreamscape Nation: A History of Colonial Australia in Ten Poems. He is also involved in two co-written books in progress, the first on drought and Australian culture and the second on the history of expertise and peer review.