Book Prizes

The Association awards two annual prizes for outstanding books in social science history.

Presidents Book Award

A $1000 prize is awarded annually for a meritorious first work by an early-career scholar. Entrants are judged on scholarly significance, interdisciplinary reach, and methodological innovativeness within monographs analyzing past structures and events and change over time. Books with a copyright date of the previous year that are published within eight years of the author’s Ph.D. are eligible for consideration.

Please visit the Presidents Book Award for more information.

2024 Winner: Lachlan McNamee, Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop (Princeton University Press, 2023)

Honorable Mention: Diya Cherian, Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California Press, 2023)

2023 Winner: Robyn d’Avignon A Ritual Geology. Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa. Duke University Press (August 2022).

2023 Honorable Mention: Wei Yu Wayne Tan Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity. University of Michigan Press (September 2022).

Learn more and see a list of past winners »

Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award

A $1,000 prize is awarded annually for an outstanding book in social science history to honor the memory of Allan Sharlin. Allen exemplified the finest traditions of social science history. His training and scholarship were broadly interdisciplinary and he used both quantitative and more traditional methodologies. Books published in the previous year are eligible for consideration.

Please visit the Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award for more information.

2024 Winners:

• Taisu Zhang, The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
• Anna M. Grzymała-Busse, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton University Press, 2023)

Honorable Mention: Nicholas Hoover Wilson, Modernity’s Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India (Columbia University Press, 2023)

2023 Winner: Ayşe Zarakol, Before the West. The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders. Cambridge University Press (February 2022).

Learn more and see a list of past winners »

Paper Prizes

The Association promotes high quality scholarship through its awards program, which recognize the best work by a younger scholar and the best work by any scholar in our many fields submitted to our annual conference. The two paper prizes are given only for papers published in Social Science History during the previous year. The winning papers are selected by the journal’s editorial board.

Founder’s Prize

2024 Winner: Dave Hacker, Martin Dribe and Jonas Helgertz, “Wealth and Child Mortality in the Nineteenth-Century United States: Evidence from Three Panels of American Couples, 1850–1880.” Vol. 47, Issue 3

Honorable Mentions:

• Sanne Muurling, Tim Riswick, Katalin Buzasi, “The Last Nationwide Smallpox Epidemic in the Netherlands: Infectious Disease and Social Inequalities in Amsterdam, 1870–1872.” Vol. 47, Issue 2
• Amaury de Vicq and Christiaan van Bochove, “Historical Diversity in Credit Intermediation: Cosignatory Lending Institutions in Europe and North America, 1700s–1960s.” Vol. 47, Issue 1

2023 Winner: Daniel Seligson and Anne E. C. McCants “Polygamy, the Commodification of Women, and Underdevelopment.” Social Science History Volume 46, Issue 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 1-34.

Learn more and see a list of past winners »

Graduate Student Paper Prize

2024 Winner: Emre Amasyalı (grad student), “Protestant Missionary Education and the Diffusion of Women’s Education in Ottoman Turkey: A Historical GIS Analysis.” Vol. 46, Issue 1

Honorable Mention: Daniel Scott Smith, “Social Scientization and the Schooling State in UK Parliamentary Discourse, 1803–1909.” Vol. 46, Issue 1

2022 Winner: Kerice Doten-Snitker “Contexts of State Violence: Jewish Expulsions in the Holy Roman Empire.” Social Science History  Volume 45, Issue 1 (Spring 2021), pp. 131-163.

Learn more and see a list of past winners »