A historian connecting Chernobyl to modern Eastern European history
David Marples is a Canadian historian at the University of Alberta who studies the modern history and politics of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. He was an early analyst of Chernobyl’s social and political consequences, beginning with Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR, published in the year of the accident, and later work on nuclear policy, safety, and the responses of states and affected communities. His research expanded to national history, famine, and the Soviet collapse, while treating Chernobyl as an important influence on the USSR’s crisis without reducing that collapse to a single cause.
Career Timeline
- 1975BA, University of London
- 1980MA in History, University of Alberta
- 1985PhD in Economic and Social History, University of Sheffield
- 1987Published Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR
- 1988Published The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster
- 1991Published Ukraine Under Perestroika
- 2004–2014Director, Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine, University of Alberta
- 2010–2015President, North American Association for Belarusian Studies