David Blackbourn


David Gordon Blackbourn is Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Chair of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches modern German and European history. Prior to arriving at Vanderbilt, Blackbourn was Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University.

Career

Blackbourn went to Leeds Modern School, and then read history at Christ's College, Cambridge, before moving to Jesus College.
After completing his dissertation at Jesus College, Blackbourn became a lecturer at Queen Mary College in 1976, before joining the faculty of Birkbeck College in 1979.
In 1992 Blackbourn moved to the USA, where he was Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard, and served as director of the university's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies from 2007-2012. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994. He was chair of the Harvard History Department from 1998–1999 and again from 2000–2002. In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
As of July 2018, Blackbourn is compiling a transnational history of Germany in the world from 1500-2000.
He is on the editorial board of the journal Past & Present; the academic advisory board of the Institute for European History, Mainz; and the advisory board of the Friends of the German Historical Institute, Washington. He was president of the Conference Group on Central European History of the American Historical Association in 2003–2004. Since 2016, he has served as a trustee of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC.

Works