David Blackbourn is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Chair of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches modern German and European history.
Prior to arriving at Vanderbilt, Mr. Blackbourn was Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University and served as director of Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Past & Present, the academic advisory board of the Institute for European History, and the advisory board of the Friends of the German Historical Institute.
He is the author of six books: "Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany" (1980), "The Peculiarities of German History" (with Geoff Eley, 1984), "Populists and Patricians" (1987), "Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany" (1993), which won of the Hans Rosenberg Prize, History of Germany 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century (2002, 2nd edition), and The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (2006), which won the George Mosse Prize and the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Prize for Best Book in Forest and Conservation History.
Mr. Blackborn earned his Ph.D. in history at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.
