Nancy Snow, Professor of Communications Emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, is an internationally renowned authority on public diplomacy, propaganda studies, media influence, and nation branding. She lives in Japan and the United States. Her career spans continents and disciplines, and she advises governments, institutions, and private clients on global persuasion strategies and strategic communications. Dr. Snow, a regular contributor to Nikkei Asia and Nikkei Business, brings a sharp, informed voice to the world’s most pressing geopolitical and media issues.
The author, editor, or co-editor of 16 books, Dr. Snow is the lead author of the 8th edition of the landmark textbook, Propaganda and Persuasion (Sage, 2025), alongside Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell. Her titles include The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda (with Paul Baines and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy); Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, 2nd edition (with Nicholas J. Cull) and first edition (with Philip M. Taylor); and the Japanese-language The Mystery of Japan’s Information Power (Bunshindo, 2022). Snow’s work has been translated into multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Indonesian. Her forthcoming book, Battleship Diplomat: The Enduring Soul of the Mighty Mo, will be published by the Naval Institute Press.
Snow is a highly sought-after speaker and moderator. She has delivered more than 200 keynote talks across 32 countries, and her writing has appeared in the Journal of Communication, The ANNALS, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Japan Times, The Diplomat, and The Guardian, among many others. As an expert analyst, she has appeared more than 650 times in major media outlets, including ABC News, BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, TRT World, and CNN International.
Professor Snow is a three-time Fulbright scholarship recipient with prestigious university appointments in Germany (University of Freiburg), Japan (Sophia University), and Greece (Panteion University and the Institute of International Relations in Athens). From 2013 to 2015, she was a Social Science Research Council Abe Fellow and Visiting Research Professor at the Institute for Journalism, Media & Communication Studies (MediaCom), Keio University.
Dr. Snow is the only foundational faculty to teach in the leading master’s degree programs in public diplomacy: Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and USC’s Annenberg School. At the invitation of Dean Alex Mintz, she served as a visiting professor of public diplomacy and marketing foreign policy in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel. At the urging of her co-editor and co-author, the late Philip M. Taylor of the University of Leeds, she was invited as a visiting professor to the Centre of Media and Information Warfare Studies at UiTM in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Takeshi Matsuda, President of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, appointed her, with the Chancellor’s endorsement, Japan’s inaugural public diplomacy professor, PAX MUNDI Distinguished Professor of Public Diplomacy, inspired by the university’s motto: PAX MUNDI PER LINGUAS.
In AY 2022–2023, Snow served as Distinguished Visiting Professor and Faculty Advisor at Tsinghua University’s Schwarzman Scholars Program, which followed her Schwarzman College appointment as the Walt Disney Chair in Global Media. At the invitation of Li Xiguang, Founding Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, Snow became the first American professor to teach public diplomacy at Tsinghua University, Asia’s #1 university, in the year before the Beijing Olympics.
Dr. Snow earned her Ph.D. in International Relations from American University’s School of International Service (SIS), which Foreign Policy magazine has consistently ranked among the top IR schools globally. She began her career as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Information Agency. A summa cum laude graduate in Political Science from Clemson University, she later held a DAAD Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.
Outside her academic pursuits, Dr. Snow holds many affiliate appointments, including as a contributing writer to the official journal of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence; Senior Advisor in Global Public Affairs and Communications at Kreab Tokyo; Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS), Temple University Japan; Senior Fellow in Public Diplomacy at the Sympodium Institute for Strategic Communications; Senior Advisor to the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Foundation; and Strategic Communications Advisor to the International Security Industry Council (ISIC) Japan.