Prof. dr. Tom Smits (born 1976, MA in English and German at Antwerp University Institute (Belgium) and University of Vienna (Austria)) is a Professor of German variational linguistics at the Department of Linguistics, and of English, German and CLIL teaching methodology at the Antwerp School of Education (University of Antwerp), which he combines with an appointment as Chief Researcher in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities at Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania). In 2024, he was nominated as the president of Linguapolis, the University of Antwerp Language Centre.

He obtained his PhD in 2007 on sub-standard language variation in German and Dutch, and its influence on attitudes to regional language use in media and education. This PhD made him the first foreign scientist to be awarded the German Agathe Lasch Prize for research into Low German, presented to him by the Senate of Hamburg (Germany) in 2013. In 2021, he was appointed as Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Education at Rhodes University (South Africa) after a successful nomination by the Faculty in recognition of his standing in the field of multilingualism and education. 2022 saw him spend a semester at the University of California, Davis (USA) as a Fulbright scholar.

Since mid-2023, he has been a proud member of the Stellenbosch University community, acting as an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies.