Dr. Tucker Adkins is an Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Milligan University. He is a historian of religion and early American life, specializing in lay religious experience in the early modern British Atlantic. His current research explores how the so-called “Evangelical Revival” produced a new religious sensorium through various radical revivalist groups.

Dr. Adkins is under contract with the University of Georgia Press for his book project New Birth, New World: Religious Experience in the Awakened Atlantic World. The book examines how religious radicalism—including unrestrained shouting, bodily convulsion, and outdoor assemblies—shaped awakened Protestantism in 18th-century England, North America, Scotland, and Wales. His other research has been published or is forthcoming in outlets such as Religion and American Culture, New England Quarterly, Scottish Church History, and Fides et Historia. Additionally, Dr. Adkins is editing the first critical edition of the personal diaries of Methodist William Seward (d. 1740), with David Ceri Jones, which will be published by University of Wales Press.

Dr. Adkins came to Christ between high school and his undergraduate studies, and college campus ministry played a significant role in his spiritual growth and first experience of Christian community. Since 2016, he and his family have been faithful members of churches within the Anglican Church in North America. Dr. Adkins has enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from his colleagues at Milligan since joining in the fall of 2024. He values the generosity and friendship of his peers, which has already deeply enriched his teaching and intellectual life.

Education:
BA, History, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 2013
MA, American Religious History, Florida State University, 2017
PhD, American Religious History, Florida State University, 2022 (dissertation defended with distinction)