Thomas Childers is the Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Tennessee and earned his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1976.
Since 1976, Professor Childers has taught in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright scholarship, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Research Grant, a fellowship in European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a West European Studies Research Grant from Harvard University.
In addition to teaching at University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Childers has held visiting professorships at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, Smith College, and Swarthmore College, and he has lectured in London, Oxford, Berlin, Munich, and other universities in the United States and Europe.