Tom Richardson completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales in 2014 and is currently a lecturer at the Australian Defence Force Academy at UNSW, Canberra. His research interests include Australian military history, the Vietnam War and counter-insurgency. Richardson previously worked as a researcher with the Official History of Australian Operations in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan and as a researcher with the Official History of Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post–Cold War Operations. His first book, Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy, 1966–1972 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.