Professor Nicholas Terpstra, FRSC, obtained his BA (1980) and MA (1983) at McMaster University and PhD in History (1989) from the University of Toronto. Beginning his academic career at the University of Regina, he moved to the History Department at the University of Toronto in 1998, teaching the social history of the Italian Renaissance. He has been cross-appointed to the Centre for Medieval Studies, Italian Studies/ISPLAS, the Study of Religion, and the Toronto School of Theology, and has broadened his research, teaching, and publication into early modern global social history while pursuing methodological innovations in digital humanities and spatial and sensory history. He earned election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2014.

Professor Terpstra’s research and publications have addressed themes at the intersections of politics, religion, gender, and charity in early modern cities, focusing initially on Renaissance Italy. In 6 published monographs, 24 essay and source collections, and 77 articles and chapters, he has developed three bodies of work on the languages, forms, and tensions driving social change in different early modern political contexts.

The first of these uses a variety of methodological tools to explore civil society and social capital in early modern society, focusing on civic religion and charitable institutions, and on women, children, criminals, and the poor as both the subjects and the agents of change. Cultures of Charity (2013) won prizes from the American Historical Association and the Society for Italian Studies, while Senses of Space in the Early Modern World (2024) innovates through use of material, sensory, and spatial research tools, developed further in the new Fabric of Trust research project in progress with Melbourne colleagues.

The second body of work examines early modern religious refugees and exiles in a comparative and global context, moving to a broader framing of Reformation history as a global phenomenon. One of his most influential works Religious Refugees of the Early Modern World (2015) articulated a new model of the Reformation foregrounding expulsion as social purification resulting in the first emergence of the religious refugee as a mass phenomenon. This triggered an international and interdisciplinary research project including 2 SSHRC-funded international conferences and 4 essay and source collections. More recently, Lost and Found: Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World (2023) unpacks the particularly early modern dynamics of forced migration.

The third is a digital humanities project that maps social, sensory, and built environments in mid-sixteenth century Tuscany cites (Florence, Siena, Livorno). Called DECIMA, this project moves strategically beyond all previous mapping projects and promises to revolutionize digital humanities mapping in early modern humanities research, combining research data, 3D visualization, and street-level access: see Hidden Renaissance: Urban Space, Geolocated Apps and Public History. (2022). The ongoing project has engaged 40 graduate and post-doctoral researchers thus far and continues to recruit both graduate and postdoctoral researchers.

Professor Terpstra has built international research networks, holding visiting appointments and fellowships in Italy, England, Australia, Israel, America, the Netherlands, articulating collaborations through conferences and collections, and serving as President of the Renaissance Society of America (2022-24), the largest global association in the field.