Dr. Heidi Tworek is an associate professor of international history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her work examines the history and policy around media, hate speech, health communications, international organizations, and platform governance. She is a member of the Science and Technology Studies program, the Language Science Initiative, and the Institute for European Studies at UBC. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Heidi's prize-winning book, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945, was published in 2019 by Harvard University Press. Alongside two co-edited volumes, Heidi has published or has forthcoming over 35 book chapters and journal articles on media and communications, German and transatlantic politics, the digital economy, the history of technology, legal history, digital history, and the history of health. She is currently working on several projects, including a history of health communications and an edited volume on the interwar world.
Heidi is committed to bringing a historical sensibility to policy discussions. She regularly writes policy briefs on topics including Covid-19 communications, online harassment of politicians, and platform governance. She has briefed or advised officials and policymakers from governments around the world on media, democracy, and the digital economy. She has also served on the steering committee for multiple transatlantic and international working groups on transatlantic relations, freedom of expression, and global platform governance.
Her writing has been published in English and German in major magazines and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, Globe & Mail, Columbia Journalism Review, War on the Rocks, Wired, Nieman Journalism Lab, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, ZEIT, Internationale Politik, and The Conversation. Her work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, STAT News, Globe & Mail, and many others. Heidi also appears regularly on national radio and television in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
She received her BA (Hons) in Modern and Medieval Languages with a double first from Cambridge University and earned her MA and Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. Her Ph.D. received the Herman E. Krooss Prize for best dissertation in business history. Heidi has held visiting fellowships at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington DC, Birkbeck, University of London, and the Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany. She has also taught as a guest lecturer at Freie Universität, Berlin, and Göttingen University. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY HEIDI TWOREK
Stopping the hostile online attacks hurled at candidates
Disinformation: It’s History
Lessons from South Korea’s approach to tackling disinformation
