Blackbourn went to
Leeds Modern School (now
Lawnswood 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 US, 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 to 2012. He was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994. He was chair of the Harvard History Department from 1998 to 1999 and again from 2000 to 2002. In 2007, he was elected a
fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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==