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.
Hi, I’m Nicholas Terpstra – I’m the 16th Provost of Trinity College. What makes me most excited to be Trinity’s new Provost is the community that I get to be a part of. We have amazing students. We have first rate faculty. We have administrators and staff who are completed devoted. And we have fully engaged alumni. My greatest priority this year is the Lawson Centre for Sustainability. It really is an extraordinary centre for people to live, for people to study, for people to socialize. It’s really going to be the heart of the community. I really look forward to meeting you this year. I live on campus in the Provost’s Lodge. I hope that our paths will cross and I’ll see you over the course of this coming year. Welcome to Trinity College.
Provost Mayo Moran
Professor Mayo Moran was appointed as the 15th Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College on July 1, 2014. Prior to assuming her role as Provost, Professor Moran served as the first female Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. As Dean, she led curriculum change, revised the admissions process and created the Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights and the Centre for the Legal Profession, among many other initiatives. Her strong relationships with students, alumni and faculty led to her successful leadership of a $53 million campaign for the Faculty’s new Jackman Law Building.
Provost Moran has brought to Trinity College her commitment to students. In 2016, she released the College’s new Strategic Plan: People, Program and Place, which builds upon the College’s reputation for academic excellence and interdisciplinary innovation and focuses on enhancing the whole student experience in order to make the College an even a better place to live, work and learn. As Provost she has emphasized the student experience with initiatives ranging from mental health and wellness, to revitalized food services, to student services and program enhancements, to infrastructure renewal.
Provost Moran’s teaching interests include both private and public law. She continues to supervise graduate and undergraduate students. At Trinity she teaches a fourth-year undergraduate course in the Ethics, Society & Law program entitled Ten Cases that Changed the World, which Maclean’s Magazine recently noted as one of the “cool courses” at the University of Toronto.
Provost Moran publishes extensively on comparative constitutional law, legal and feminist theory, and historical injustices among other topics. Her book Rethinking the Reasonable Person (OUP) examines how judicial ideas of “normal” behaviour may discriminate against women and girls, and she recently co-edited The Residential Schools Litigation and Settlement special edition of the University of Toronto Law Journal. Her current work considers how the past became a legal problem and what we should do about it. She is a frequent guest lecturer and presents scholarly work at conferences around the world.
Provost Moran is an active member of many committees both inside and outside the University of Toronto. Recently she chaired the University of Toronto’s Expert Panel on Sexual Violence Policies and co-chaired the Faculty of Law’s Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Committee. She also serves on the Council of Ontario Universities Reference Group on Sexual Violence and is a founding member of the Transnational Advisory Group of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2010, at the request of the Attorney General of Ontario, Provost Moran chaired an inquiry into Strategic Litigation against Public Participation (SLAPP). The Government of Ontario also appointed her as the Independent Reviewer for the 2013 Review of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Since 2007, Provost Moran has chaired the Government of Canada’s Independent Assessment Process Oversight Committee that assists in the implementation of the Indian Residential Schools Agreement.
Provost Moran teaches private and public law, supervises graduate students, and publishes extensively. She is a frequent guest lecturer and an active member of a number of committees both inside and outside U of T.
Provost Moran obtained a BA (1980, English and Sociology) and B.Ed. (1981) at the University of British Columbia and taught secondary school in northern British Columbia before attending law school. She completed her LL.B. at McGill University (1990), her LL.M. at the University of Michigan (1992) and her S.J.D. at the University of Toronto (1999). In addition to numerous other awards, in 2012 Provost Moran received a YWCA Woman of Distinction Award.
Provost Moran completed her second and final term as Provost & Vice-Chancellor or Trinity College on June 30, 2024. View Provost Moran’s final community message (June 26, 2024) and Trinity College Milestones 2014 to 2024
To make an appointment with Provost Terpstra, please contact the Office of the Provost:
416-978-2689
trinity.provost@utoronto.ca