Thomas Kirk has published extensively on the political and economic history of the Republic of Genoa, including the 2005 monograph Genoa and the Sea: Policy and Power in an Early Modern Maritime Republic, 1559–1684. After spending more than twenty years in Italy teaching in the Italian university system and for American study-abroad programs, he returned to his native Oklahoma (USA) in 2011. He is currently a lecturer and teaches interdisciplinary courses in the Humanities at the University of Central Oklahoma.