Dr Thomas Richardson

Lecturer
UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities & Social Sciences

I graduated from Monash University with a BA (Hons) in 2009 and completed my doctorate, 'As if we'd never really been there? Pacification in Phuoc Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1966-1972', at UNSW Canberra in 2014. Between then and assuming my current position in July 2018 I worked as a tutor and lecturer at UNSW Canberra (2015-1016), as a researcher on the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping (2015), and as a researcher on the Official History of Australian Operations in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan (2016-2018). My first book, Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy, 1966-1972 was published by Cambridge in 2017. I have contributed to a number of edited volumes and edited two with Tristan Moss: New Directions in War and History (Big Sky, 2016) and Beyond Combat: Australian Military Activity Away From the Battlefield (NewSouth, 2018). My broad research interests are Australian military history and counterinsurgency and the confluence of the two, particularly in South-East Asia after 1945. My current project is an operational history of Australia in the Second Anglo-Boer War.

  • Books | 2017
    Connor J; Stockings C; Richardson T; Clark C; Stanley P; Grey J; Stevenson R; James K; Moss T, 2017, The Shadow Men: The leaders who shaped the Australian Army from the Veldt to Vietnam, Connor J; Stockings C, (ed.), NewSouth Publishing, Sydney
    Books | 2017
    Richardson T, 2017, Destroy and Build Pacification in Phuoc Thuy, 1966–1972, Cambridge University Press
  • Book Chapters | 2021
    Richardson T, 2021, 'Helping the Americans help the Vietnamese?', in An Army of Influence Eighty Years of Regional Engagement, Cambridge University Press, pp. 115 - 139
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Richardson T, 2021, 'The Korean War', in Fighting Australia’s Cold War The Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965, ANU Press, pp. 73 - 92
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Richardson T, 2021, 'The Malayan Emergency', in Fighting Australia’s Cold War The Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965, ANU Press, pp. 115 - 135
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Moss T; Richardson T, 2018, 'History and the military’s other tasks', in Moss T; Richardson T (ed.), Beyond Combat: the Australian military experience off the battlefield, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 1 - 9, https://www.booktopia.com.au/beyond-combat-tristan-moss/prod9781742235905.html
  • Edited Books | 2018
    Moss T; Richardson T, (ed.), 2018, Beyond Combat: the Australian military experience off the battlefields, UNSW Press, Sydney
    Edited Books | 2016
    Richardson TE; Moss T, (ed.), 2016, New Directions in War and History, Big Sky Publishing
  • Journal articles | 2023
    Richardson T, 2023, 'Small Boats and Brave Men: The 9th Division and the use of the Littoral in the Huon Peninsula Campaign September 1943–January 1944', Australian Army Journal, 19, pp. 89 - 118