DAN DAVID PRIZE, WORLD'S LARGEST HISTORY PRIZE, ANNOUNCES 2025 WINNERS

Nine Historians, Archaeologists and Filmmakers Receive $300,000 (USD) Each as the Dan David Prize Honors Innovative Research on the Human Past

Winners' Work Includes Research on Asian American Immigration, Holocaust Archaeology, Enslavement of Roma People, Glass Production in Pre-Colonial Africa and Black Africans in Europe During the Renaissance

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world, today announced its 2025 winners. The nine winners, whose work explores the human past through exceptional scholarship and research, will each receive $300,000 (USD) in recognition of their achievements and to support their future endeavors. The nine winners, all in early and mid stages of their career, are researchers and filmmakers who work in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. 

The winners are selected after an open nomination process by a global committee of historians that changes annually. This year's selection committee members are affiliated with leading academic institutions including the University of Toronto, the Cyprus Institute, and the University of Cambridge.

"The work of this year's winners ranges from enlisting the methods of archaeology to explore Nazi death camps to rewriting what we know about the development and use of glass in Africa," said Ariel David, board member of the Prize and son of Dan David, the founder of the Prize. "By making groundbreaking discoveries or applying new methods to historical research, our winners constantly challenge us to think about the past while rethinking how we shed light on it. We are also particularly excited that two winners this year work in the film industry, helping bring scholarly findings to broader audiences and thus highlighting the importance of historical research for society at large."

The 2025 Dan David Prize winners are:

• Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, British Museum - An anthropological archaeologist who uses material science to uncover the history of technological development in premodern West Africa. His research has transformed our understanding of how glass was produced in Africa, proving that glass production in the region predated European colonialism and was developed independently. In addition to authoring academic articles, Babalola - a research archaeologist at the British Museum - is active in public outreach in Nigeria, bringing the knowledge he produces through archaeological work to the communities that are connected to this history. He served as lead archaeologist ahead of construction of the upcoming Museum of West African Arts set to open in Benin City, Nigeria this year.

• Mackenzie Cooley, Hamilton College - A historian of science and medicine in the early modern Hispanic world. Combining intellectual history, the history of science and environmental history, Cooley's work explores how humans have shaped, classified and extracted knowledge from nature - and, in so doing, redefined their own bodies, societies and empires. Her first book, The Perfection of Nature (2022), reveals how Renaissance breeding practices shaped ideas of race, human potential and dominion over animals. Her current research explores "bioprospecting" - the quest to harness nature for human health and medicine.

• Bar Kribus, Tel Aviv University - An archaeologist specializing in Late Antique to Early Modern Ethiopian archaeology and the history and material culture of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews). He combines archaeological methodologies, fieldwork and written and oral histories in order to explore the religious traditions of the Beta Israel and the interreligious interactions between different religious groups in Ethiopia. He has written books and articles on the Jewish monastic tradition of the Beta Israel and the Jewish political autonomy in the Semen Mountains of Northern Ethiopia. He is currently working on a comparative study of prayer houses in the Ethiopian highlands.

• Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, Do the Right Films - An artist, filmmaker, educator and cultural innovator, whose work is deeply influenced by his African heritage and explores the complex intersections of identity, race and historical representation. He has directed several documentary films, including Inside Buffalo (2010), focusing on African American soldiers in World War II, 18 Ius Soli (2012), exploring the citizenship rights of second-generation immigrants in Italy, and Blaxploitalian (2016), examining Black representation in Italian cinema from 1915 to the present day. His most recent film, We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, was presented at the 60th Venice Art Biennale in 2024.

• Dmitri Levitin, University of Utrecht and All Souls College, Oxford - A historian of premodern knowledge who has published on the histories of scholarship, science, medicine, philosophy, theology, and European encounters with and perceptions of global societies. His books include Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Kingdom of Darkness (Cambridge University Press, 2022); he has just completed a trade book on the history of the humanities and the sciences from ancient Mesopotamia to 1700, arguing that intellectual change is underpinned above all by educational structures. He is currently undertaking a collaborative research project on a remarkable new discovery: the notebook written by Isaac Newton's university roommate. 

• Beth Lew-Williams, Princeton University - A historian of race and migration in the United States, specializing in the study of Asian Americans. Her work demonstrates how restrictions on Chinese immigration to the United States was pivotal in the construction of American concepts of citizenship and "alienage." She is the author of the forthcoming book, John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law (Harvard University Press, September 2025), which uncovers thousands of laws that regulated the everyday lives of Chinese immigrants and tells the stories of those who refused to accept a conditional place in American life. 

• Hannah Marcus, Harvard University - A historian of science whose work focuses on the scientific culture of early modern Europe between 1400-1700. She is the author of Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and is currently completing a book on the history of old age in early modern Italy. She is also the Faculty Director of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University.

• Alina Șerban, Founder of Untold Stories - An award-winning film and theater director, actress and writer whose work foregrounds the history, culture and identity of the Roma. Șerban challenges dehumanizing stereotypes and addresses the historical silencing of Roma experiences, in particular Roma slavery. Șerban's medium includes films such as Letter of Forgiveness and theater productions like The Great Shame. Șerban is currently working on her first feature film. She is the first Roma woman recipient of one of the highest distinctions offered by the Romanian state: The Order of Cultural Excellence, for her artistic contribution, as well as for her commitment to representing Roma identity and combating racism and xenophobia.

• Caroline Sturdy Colls, University of Huddersfield - A Professor of Holocaust Archaeology and Genocide Investigation, Sturdy Colls combines methodologies from forensic archaeology, history, digital humanities and the arts to document the evidence of genocide, particularly the Holocaust. Using these methodologies, she was able to discover evidence of the gas chambers in Treblinka, which had been razed to the ground by the Nazis, while honoring the Jewish halachic requirement to avoid disturbing buried human remains. She is the author of numerous books and articles, and her work has been the subject of two Smithsonian documentaries: Treblinka: Hitler's Killing Machine and Adolf Island, which focuses on her research about the occupation of Alderney. 

"We're delighted to add another nine outstanding individuals to our growing community of scholars, curators and filmmakers from around the globe," said Professor Tim Cole, historian and Academic Advisor to the Dan David Prize. "They will join the 27 previous winners who, together, research varied aspects of the human past. The originality of the questions being asked and the methods deployed show how archaeologists and historians are creatively working within and across disciplines to offer new understandings of our collective past." 

The 2025 winners recently received the Prize at a gathering in Italy. Nominations for the 2026 Dan David Prize are now being accepted online.  

The Dan David Prize was first established in 2001 by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Dan David, to reward innovative and interdisciplinary work that contributed to humanity. In 2021, the Prize was relaunched with a focus on historical research, honoring the founder's passion for history and archaeology. It now rewards early and mid-career scholars to help them fulfill their potential at a time when historical knowledge and scholarship are under attack, many university departments are threatened with closure, and budgets for research, archives, libraries and museums are being slashed or eliminated.

The late Dan David lived through persecution in Nazi-occupied and then Communist Romania, becoming an accomplished photographer and later an entrepreneur and philanthropist. David was fascinated by automatic instant photography, and he built a company that introduced countries around the globe to the automatic photo booth. Dan had a keen interest in history and archaeology, which feature in many of the projects of the Dan David Foundation. His full bio is available here.

About the Dan David Prize
The Dan David Prize, endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University, is the largest history prize in the world. Dan David, the founder of the Prize, believed that knowledge of the past enriches us and helps us grapple with the challenges of the present, and is crucial for reimagining our collective future. At a time of diminishing support for the humanities, the Prize celebrates the next generation of outstanding historians, archaeologists, curators and digital humanists. Each year, up to nine researchers are awarded $300,000 each in recognition of their achievements and to support their future endeavors.

To learn more about Dan David, the Prize and the 2025 winners, visit www.dandavidprize.org.