Timothy J. Shaffer serves as the inaugural Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Chair of Civil Discourse and director of the SNF Ithaca Initiative at the University of Delaware. He is also a senior advisor with the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona.

A scholar of civil discourse and deliberative democracy,  Shaffer serves as the associate editor of the Journal of Deliberative Democracy, as an expert with the Varieties of Democracy research project, and as a co-director guiding the work of the Deliberative Pedagogy Lab, an international project centering how deliberation can transform higher education approaches and environments.

His work focuses on the role of civic professionals in institutional settings such as local government, higher education, and non-governmental organizations in relationship with diverse communities.