Thomas Murphy joined New College in 2024 as a Career Development Fellow in French. He received a BA in Foreign Languages (French/Ancient Greek) from Austin Peay State University, a small state university in Middle Tennessee, and an MPhil and PhD from New York University in French Literature, during which time he also completed graduate coursework at Princeton, the Sorbonne and the EHESS. In 2021-2022 he was the recipient of a Georges Lurcy Trust fellowship and was a visiting researcher (pensionnaire étranger) at the École normale supérieure. In 2022-2023 he was an invited doctoral researcher (doctorant-chercheur invité) at Sorbonne Université. In addition to French, Thom has taught Latin language and literature for over six years at the Latin/Greek Institute, CUNY/Brooklyn College’s 50-year-running intensive summer Latin bootcamp.

Teaching

At New College Thom teaches the early modern papers (Papers VII and X), as well as medieval and early modern texts, and translation for prelims (Prelims Papers IIb, III, IV). Additionally, he supervises occasional dissertations on early modern topics.

Research

Thom is interested in the intersection of pre-modern scientific thought and the humanistic tradition broadly (especially learned poetry and philology) in the early modern world. His first book project, entitled Nature Defined, studies the evolving meaning of the French word ‘nature’, as well as the Latin and Greek equivalents natura and phusis, in sixteenth-century France. In April 2026, he coedited an issue of Le Verger dedicated to representations of the natural world in 16th-century France. His second book project investigates the problem of originality in the Renaissance. 

Selected Publications

•  ‘Guy Le Fèvre de La Boderie et la science nouvelle’, in Écopoétique des siècles anciens, ed. Louis-Patrick Bergot. Presses universitaires de Strasbourg. (forthcoming) An early version of this paper can be viewed here.
• 'Le sens d'environner et l'idée de nature dans un sonnet de Du Bellay', in Le Verger, bouquet XXXIII: ‘Représenter la nature en France au XVIe siècle : écritures poétiques et relations au monde’, eds. Olivier Halévy, Thomas Murphy and Adèle Payen de la Garanderie, April 2026, pp. 1-19.
• ‘Introduction’ (with Olivier Halévy and Adèle Payen de la Garanderie), in Le Verger, bouquet XXXIII: ‘Représenter la nature en France au XVIe siècle : écritures poétiques et relations au monde’, April 2026.
• ‘From Contemplation to Composition: Translating Physiology in the Early Modern Period’, in Automata, Cyborgs and Mutants: Eccentric Bodies from Humanism to Transhumanism, ed. Jil Muller (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2026), pp. 35-52.
• ‘L’Humanisme en formule. Itinéraires de l’Homo sum de Térence (XVe-XIXe siècle)’, in Fabula-LhT, no. 30: ‘La littérature en formules’, eds. Olivier Belin, Anne-Claire Bello and Luciana Radut-Gaghi. 2023.
• ‘Définir la nature à la Renaissance : le monde et le sexe dans l'atelier du lexicographe’, in Albineana, no. 34: ‘Présence et paradigmes du monde naturel’, ed. Cécile Huchard (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022), pp. 25-47.