Nick Breyfogle is Chair and Professor of History at The Ohio State University.

He is a specialist in the history of Russia/Soviet Union and in global environmental and water history. He serves as co-lead of the Environmental History Initiative and was a founding faculty member of the Sustainability Institute. 

He is the author of Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (2005), which was awarded the Ohio Academy of History Outstanding Publication Award in 2006; and editor/co-editor of Fluid Worlds: Water and Culture in Eurasian History (2026); Hydraulic Societies: Water, Power, and Control in East and Central Asian History (2023); Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History (2021), Nature at War: American Environments and World War II (2020); Readings in Water History (2020); Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History (2018); and Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History (2007).

Breyfogle has also worked extensively in the field of Public History. Since 2007, he has been co-editor of the online multimedia magazine/podcast/video channels Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, A Well-Informed People, and most recently of Picturing Black History, a collaboration with Getty Images. In 2024, he co-edited Picturing Black History: Photographs and Stories That Changed the World, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction.

In 2022, he was awarded The Herbert Feis Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public History from the American Historical Association. He also received the the 2026 Ohio State Faculty-to-Faculty Mentorship Award and the 2023 ASC Diversity Enhancement Faculty Award.

He is currently completing two book projects, “Baikal: the Great Lake and its People” and “Water: A Human History.”

Breyfogle teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Russian/Soviet, Modern European, and Global Environmental History (especially Water History). In 2011, he was honored with Ohio State’s Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award. Breyfogle leads the study abroad course Politics of Climate: The United Nations Summit Education Abroad Program, which takes students to the UN Climate negotiations each year, and the Environmental History Field School, which takes students to Arizona and Utah each year to explore U.S. environmental history, the Colorado River, and several National Parks.  

From 2019 to 2026, he was Director of the Harvey Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching.

He received his Ph.D. (1998) and M.A. (1994) in Russian and European History from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B. A. (1990) from Brown University in History and French Civilization.