After receiving his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, Thomas Noble taught at Albion College, Michigan State University, Texas Tech University, and the University of Virginia. In 1999 he received the University of Virginia's highest award for teaching excellence and in 2008 Notre Dame's Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 2011 he received the Charles Sheedy, C.S.C., award for excellence in teaching and scholarship from Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters. In 2001 he became Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame and in 2008 chairperson of Notre Dame's history department. He is the author of Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, which won the 2011 Otto Gründler Prize, and The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825. He has edited six books. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994 and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in 1999-2000. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities (three times) and the American Philosophical Society (twice). He was elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2004. In 2012 he served as president of the American Catholic Historical Association.