David Holland: Mormon scholar

David F. Holland is a renowned scholar of American religious history and an associate professor of American religious history at Harvard Divinity School. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has the distinction of being the first Latter-day Saint professor at Harvard Divinity School.

Prior to his appointment, he was a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2011, he was recognized as the Nevada Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Holland was born in 1973. He is the son of Patricia Holland and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He served a full-time mission to Czechoslovakia.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He taught at Stanford as a lecturer for one year before going to UNLV.

Holland is the author of Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2011), and “A Mixed Construction of Subversion and Conversion: The Complicated Lives and Times of Religious Women” in Gender and History (2010).

Holland and his wife, Jeanne, have four children. His brother is Matthew S. Holland.