David Gordon Blackbourn (born 1949 in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England)[1][2] 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.
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.[3]
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 (since 2012 called Central European History Society) in 2003–2004. Since 2016, he has served as a trustee of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Works
Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (1980)
The Peculiarities of German History (with Geoff Eley, 1984)