Provost

Provost Nicholas Terpstra

Professor Nicholas Terpstra was appointed 16th Provost & Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, effective July 1, 2024.

Professor Nicholas Terpstra joined the History Department at the University of Toronto in 1998 and has been a Professor of History since 2007. A recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, he is also a renowned scholar whose research interests explore questions at the intersection of politics, religion, gender and charity.

Provost Terpstra has been an active and highly valued colleague across the university. He served for seven years on the University of Toronto Governing Council as an elected Teaching Faculty member and was Chair of the Academic Board for two years. While serving on Governing Council, he was actively involved in a number of committees. As a Fellow at Victoria University, he also served for nine years on Victoria’s Board of Regents.

Provost Terpstra has significant academic administrative experience, having served as Chair of both the Department of History and the Department of Italian Studies. He has been Acting Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and for the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. In addition, he was interim Principal of the University of St. Michael’s College. Provost Terpstra’s deep knowledge of and experience in the University of Toronto includes his work chairing the Review of the Dean of Arts Office at Trinity College, a term on the Toronto School of Theology’s Board of Trustees and in 2020-2021, serving as the federated college faculty representative on the University of Toronto’s Provostial Review of the Role of the Colleges on the St. George Campus.

He has just completed a term as President of the Renaissance Society of America, having previously served in several other senior roles including as editor of the Renaissance Quarterly. An elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the recipient of numerous academic honours, Provost Terpstra earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at McMaster University and his PhD at the University of Toronto.

Provost Terpstra’s research explores questions at the intersection of politics, religion, gender and charity in Renaissance Italy. Recent works include Senses of Space in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: 2023) and Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: 2015). Earlier works including the award-winning Cultures of Charity: Women and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy (Harvard: 2013) and the microhistory Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins: 2012) explored how the politics of charity frequently silenced women’s voices. In 2011 he launched the DECIMA (Digitally Encoded Census Information & Mapping Archive) Project in collaboration with Trinity College alumnus Colin Rose (Brock University), an online digital map of Renaissance Florence that has received grants from SSHRC and the AHRC (UK). Employing early modern census data and maps, the tool tracks and geo-references occupation, gender, and wealth patterns. DECIMA has trained dozens of student researchers while moving to the goal of producing 3D maps that convey what it was like to walk around a Renaissance city, hearing its sounds, moving through its buildings and seeing its artwork. See: N. Terpstra & C. Rose (ed), Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City (Routledge, 2016).

Provost Nicholas Terpstra was installed as Trinity College’s 16th Provost & Vice-Chancellor at Trinity College Matriculation on August 26, 2024.