John Torpey previously taught in the sociology department at the University of British Columbia, where he also served as Interim Director of the Institute for European Studies. Professor Torpey has worked extensively on modern German society and history, and his book Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and Its Legacy is considered important in the field for the light it sheds on civil rights movements and intellectual activism under communist regimes. Professor Torpey is the author of a social history of passports, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, which has been widely influential for its discussion of the role of identity documents in the rise of modern states and their control over the movements of citizens and outsiders. His most recent work, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics, discusses the concept of reparations and uses of the past in contemporary politics. Torpey, who received his B.A. in political science from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, previously taught at the University of California, Irvine.