Heidi Tworek
Research Expertise
Geographic Expertise
About
Professor Heidi Tworek is a Canada Research Chair and Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Her work explores how new communications technologies affect democracy in the past and present.
A globally recognized scholar, Professor Tworek bridges academia and public policy to tackle challenges around democracy, digital platforms, and global communication. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and holds a non-resident fellowship at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. She is also a fellow of Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Canada’s New College of Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.
Tworek is the author of the award-winning book News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Harvard University Press, 2019) and co-editor of three other books. She has published or has forthcoming over 50 book chapters and journal articles spanning media history, platform governance, digital health policy, the history of technology, international organizations, and transatlantic relations.
Her research has been supported by leading institutions, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Harvard University. She has co-led multimillion-dollar grants and serves as a board chair and co-founder of several global initiatives, including the Global Platform Governance Research Network and Digital Action, an NGO advancing democratic rights in the digital age.
A trusted voice in international policy, Professor Tworek has briefed and advised government officials around the world on democracy, digital governance, and media strategy. She regularly contributes policy briefs and reports on topics such as generative AI and platform regulation, health communications, and online harassment, and has served on multiple steering committees for transatlantic and international working groups.
Her writing has been published in leading outlets including Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, The Globe & Mail, Wired, and The Conversation. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, STAT News, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, among many others. She frequently appears on radio, podcasts, and television in countries including Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Germany.
Tworek earned her BA with double first-class honors from Cambridge University and her MA and PhD in History from Harvard University, where she won the Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History. She has held fellowships at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C., Birkbeck College London, and the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam. She currently co-edits the Journal of Global History and is an associate editor of Business History.
Teaching
Publications
Books:
News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).
Global Platform Governance: Regulating Big Tech beyond the Transatlantic (Bloomsbury Press, 15 chapters, 2026). Co-edited with Nanjala Nyabola and Taylor Owen.
Worldmaking Projects and the Infrastructural Nexus: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (8 chapters, transcript/distributed by Columbia University Press, 2026). Co-edited with Mathias Albert and Tobias Werron.
The Interwar World (40 chapters, Routledge, 2023). Co-edited with Andrew Denning. Coverage in Kansas University news and review on Toynbee Prize Foundation website.
Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business (37 chapters, Routledge, 2019). Co-edited with Teresa da Silva Lopes and Christina Lubinski.
Exorbitant Expectations: International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Routledge, 2018). Co-edited with Jonas Brendebach and Martin Herzer.
Selected Journal Articles:
“Historical Perspectives on Deglobalization’s Drivers, Outcomes, and Managerial Responses,” (with Andrew Smith, Marcelo Bucheli, and Johann Fortwengel), Journal of Management Studies (published online, May 2026).
“Shaping Online Harms Policy: Civil Society and Tech Funding in Canada,” (with Elizabeth Dubois and Grace Spicer-Pilon), Canadian Journal of Communication 51.3 (September 2026), pp. 372-390.
“Canadian Policy Responses to AI-Generated Threats,” (with Chris Tenove and Spencer McKay), Canadian Public Policy (CPP) / Analyse de politques (Adp) 52.S1 (April 2026), pp. 109-121.
“The Promises and Perils of Periodization: Lessons from the Global Interwar,” (with Andrew Denning), Past & Present 270.1 (February 2026), pp. 288-307.
“Mental Health and Coping Strategies of Health Communicators Who Faced Online Abuse During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mixed Methods Study,” (with Lisa Wight, Chris Tenove, and Saima Hirani), JMIR Infodemiology 5 (2025): e68483
“Damage Control: How Candidates Interpret and Respond to Online Incivility,” (with Chris Tenove, Grace Lore, Trevor Deley, Jordan Buffie), Political Communication 40.3 (2023), pp. 283-303.
“Fighting Hate with Speech Law: Media and German Visions of Democracy,” Journal of Holocaust Research 35.2 (May 2021), pp. 106-122.
“Communicable Disease: Information, Health, and Globalization in the Interwar Period,” American Historical Review 124.3 (June 2019), pp. 813-842.
Selected Policy Series:
Co-editor (with Taylor Owen), “Platform Governance in Canada,” (17 essays), CSDI and Centre for Media, Democracy, and Technology (McGill University) (June 2023).
“Platform://Democracy – Perspectives on Platform Power, Public Values and the Potential of Social Media Councils: Research Report Americas,” (co-edited with Matthias C. Kettemann and Josefa Francke), Hamburg: Hans-Bredow-Institute (May 2023), 54 pp., doi: 10.21241/ssoar.86526.
Co-editor (with Nanjala Nyabola and Taylor Owen), “The Four Domains of Global Platform Governance: An Essay Series,” (16 essays), Centre for International Governance Innovation (June and July 2022). Winner, Gold Medal, Best Service Article for Consumers, Canadian Online Publishing Awards 2022.
Awards
Lifetime Fellow, Royal Historical Society, United Kingdom (2025)
Fellow, College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists at the Royal Society of Canada (2024)
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in the History and Policy of Health Communications (2021)
Best Service Article for Consumers, Canadian Online Publishing Awards (2022)
David Barclay Book Prize, German Studies Association (2021)
Finalist, Wallace K. Ferguson Prize, Canadian Historical Association (2021)
Finalist, Koffler Vine History Book Award (2020)
Finalist, Pinsky Givon Family Prize for Non-Fiction, Western Canada Jewish Book Awards (2020)
Honourable Mention, Council for European Studies Book Award (2020)
Ralph Gomory Book Prize, Business History Conference (2020)
Ernst Fraenkel Book Prize, Wiener Holocaust Library (2020)
Finalist, Hagley Book Prize, Business History Conference (2020)
Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History (2014)
Affiliations
Non-Resident Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute
Editorial Board, Histories of Internationalism series, Bloomsbury Press
Editorial Board, Global Connections: Roots and Routes, Leiden University Press
Affiliate, Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies, UBC