[1] Thomas James Samson was born on 6 July 1946 in Carnlough in Northern Ireland.
[1] Samson was appointed to a research fellowship at the University of Leicester in 1972.
He moved to the University of Exeter in 1973 as a lecturer; promotions followed, to reader in 1987 and Professor of Musicology in 1992.
In 1994, he was appointed Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music at the University of Bristol, and was then Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, between 2002 and 2011.
In 2018, he received the IRC Harrison Medal from the Society for Musicology in Ireland.