William I. Hitchcock is Professor of History at the University of Virginia and the Randolph P. Compton Professor at UVa’s Miller Center. His work and teaching focus on the international, diplomatic and military history of the 20^th century, in particular the era of the world wars and the cold war. He has written widely on trans-Atlantic relations and European history and politics.

He received his PhD from Yale in 1994, working under the supervision of Paul Kennedy. He is the author of France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe (UNC, 1998); From War to Peace: Altered Strategic Landscapes in the 20th Century (Yale, 2000); The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945-present (Doubleday/Anchor, 2002); and The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (Free Press, 2008) which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a winner of the George Louis Beer Prize, and a Financial Times bestseller in the UK. His most recent book is The Human Rights Revolution: An International History (co-edited with Petra Goedde and Akira Iriye, Oxford: 2012).