Professor Smith joined the University of St Andrews in 1992. 

He was Director of the British School at Rome from 2009 to 2017.

He is currently seconded to UKRI as Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Professor Smith's early research concentrated on the archaeology of early Rome and Latium as evidence of their social and economic development in the period before 500 BC; he has continued to work on the parallels between developments in Italy and in archaic Greece, and the possibilities of useful comparative work between the two. He is also researching the transformations of the Republican period, which led him to assess the evolution of the social form the Romans called the 'gens'. In addition, as one of the general editors of a new edition of the Fragmentary Roman Historians he developed a broad interest in historiography, and a specific interest in fragmentary literature, which extends to Greek historiography and fragments of Greek and Latin oratory. He is on the advisory board of a new edition of the Fragmentary Roman Orators, and also a new edition of the Fragmentary Roman Antiquarians. 

His current project considers the Roman kings, combining archaeology, historiography and social scientific methodologies to to analyse the nature of power in archaic society.

Current Projects : The Roman Kings (Leverhulme Major Research Grant)

Fragmentary Roman Orators; fragmentary Roman antiquarians; reception of Roman political thought; the Roman kings.