Thomas Vendryes began graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieur — PSL in 2001, before joining the Paris School of Economics for his PhD (2006-2011). He completed part of it at Beijing Normal University (BNU), focusing on China's development experience. There, he studied the influence of the institutional legacy of the Maoist era on the country’s economic development dynamics.

Assistant professor (with tenure) at ENS Paris-Saclay since 2012 and faculty member of the Centre for Economics at Paris-Saclay (CEPS), his main research topics are centered around development economics. He has worked extensively on China and its development since the early 1980s but has gradually broadened his research both thematically and geographically (Thailand, West African countries). After 2015, he also became involved in research and publications on Jamaican popular music, leading him to become one of the French academic specialists on Jamaican music. This work led him to be invited to coordinate a special issue of the journal Volume! dedicated to Jamaican music, and to participate in the Jamaica Jamaica! exhibition organized in 2017 by the Philharmonie de Paris, where he was a member of the scientific committee and coordinated the catalog.

He is also a member of the editorial board of the online journal La Vie des Idées, hosted by the Collège de France.