Sheila Fitzpatrick gained a PhD from Oxford University in 1969. She has been Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Russian History at the University of Chicago and an annual Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney. Fitzpatrick has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a past President of the American Association for Slavic and East European Studies.
In 2016, her On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics won the Prime Minister's Literary Award (Non-fiction).
Fitzpatrick is the daughter of historian Brian Fitzpatrick.