Tom Licence


Tom Oliver Licence FSA, FRHistS, is a British historian specialising in the period 950–1200, with an additional interest in Victorian consumer waste. He is Professor of Medieval History and Literature at the University of East Anglia and a former director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies.

Education

Licence attended Westcliff High School for Boys and has an MA in History, MPhil in Medieval History and PhD from Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. His thesis title was "England's hermits, 970–1220".

Career

Licence was appointed lecturer at the University of East Anglia in 2009 and became a professor there in 2019. For three years from 2021 he held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, which relieved him from teaching duties, to support him in writing a biography of Harold Godwinson for the Yale English Monarchs series. For three years from September 2022 he held a senior research fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
His work on Victorian consumer waste, represented in his book and website What the Victorians threw away, has attracted international press coverage.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Higher Education Academy.

Selected publications