Timothy Snyder

Short Biography

Professor Snyder holds the Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Furthermore, he is a Senior Fellow for Democracy of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York) and chairs the Academic Advisory Council of the Ukrainian History Global Initiative. Since 2008, he has been a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, where he leads the institute's Ukraine programs.

He speaks five and reads ten European languages. His eight chief books are Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (2008); Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), Thinking the Twentieth Century (with Tony Judt, 2012); Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015); On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017); and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018). Snyder co-edited three further books: The Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001); Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination (2013); and The Balkans as Europe (2018). His essays are collected in Ukrainian History, Russian Politics, European Futures (2014), and The Politics of Life and Death (2015).

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. Snyder was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and has received the Carnegie and Guggenheim fellowships, and holds state orders from Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland. He has appeared in documentaries, on network television, and in major films. His books have inspired posters, sculpture, punk rock, rap, film, theater, and opera. His words are quoted in political demonstrations around the world. He is currently researching a family history of nationalism and writing a philosophical book about freedom.

Selected Publications:

On Freedom. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2024. 

Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2020. 

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.
Über Tyrannei: Zwanzig Lektionen für den Widerstand. München: C.H. Beck, 2017.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. New York: Tim Duggan Books, September 2015.
Black Earth: Der Holocaust und warum er sich wiederholen kann. München: C.H. Beck, September 2015.

Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, and Domination, 1937-1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 (co-edited with Ray Brandon)

Thinking the 20th Century. London: Penguin Books, 2011 (with Tony Judt).
Nachdenken über das 20. Jahrhundert. München: Hanser, 2013 (gemeinsam mit Tony Judt).

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Bloodlands. Europa zwischen Hitler und Stalin 1933-1945. München: C.H. Beck, 2011.

The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

Furthermore, Snyder is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the New York Review of Books Blog.

[ Complete List of Publications ]

Former Affiliations at the IWM:
2004-2005 Visiting Fellow
1996 Junior Visiting Fellow