Thomas N. Bisson

Thomas Noel Bisson is an American historian, medievalist, academic and author. He is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History Emeritus at Harvard University.^[1]

Bisson's research centers on the political, institutional, and intellectual history of medieval Europe, with a specific emphasis on the French kingdom, southern France, and Catalonia. He has authored and co-authored research articles (21 of which were collected in Medieval France and her Pyrenean neighbors, plus two substantial editions: Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early count-kings (1151-1213) 2 vols., and The Chronography of Robert of Torigni, 2 vols.) and books, including The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History, Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140-1200, and The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government. His early work was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship (1964),^[2] with fellowships from NEH (1975) and ACLS (1979), leading to work on Catalonia that was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1991^[3] and the Creu de Sant Jordi from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2001).^[4]

Bisson was elected Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1975),^[5] Member of the American Philosophical Society (1977),^[6] and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992).^[7] He is a Corresponding Member of the Institute for Catalan Studies and the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona,^[8] and is Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.^[9]