Timothy Snyder

Chair in Modern European History
Director, Public History Lab
Professor
Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Trinity College
1 Devonshire Place 
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3K7 Canada

Timothy Snyder

Current affiliations

  • Permanent Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna
  • Chair, Academic Advisory Council, Ukrainian History Global Initiative
  • Senior Fellow for Democracy, Council on Foreign Relations (New York)

Areas of interest

  • Eastern Europe
  • Ukraine
  • History of the Soviet Union
  • History of the Holocaust
  • Authoritarianism
  • Philosophy of Freedom

Biography

Main Bio

Timothy Snyder holds the inaugural Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is also a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the head of the academic advisory council of Ukrainian History Global Initiative. He is currently on leave from his position as the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and will begin teaching at the Munk School in the 2025-2026 academic year. 

A scholar of the history of Central Europe, Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, Snyder speaks five and reads ten European languages. He is the author or editor of twenty books published in forty languages. Snyder writes for the press on Ukraine, the U.S, authoritarianism, digital politics, health, and education. He has also appeared in documentaries, on television, and as an expert witness before several parliaments. He has received state orders and decorations as well as honorary doctorates. 

His work has inspired demonstrations, sculpture, posters, punk rock, rap, film, theater, and an opera.

Select publications

Books


Snyder is a regular contributor multiple publications including the New York Review of Books and the New York Review of Books Blog.

Awards & recognition

Professor Snyder’s work has appeared in forty languages and has received a number of prizes, including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Václav Havel Foundation prize, the Foundation for Polish Science prize in the social sciences, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, the Dutch Auschwitz Committee award, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought.