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.
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.
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
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
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.
Announcements
SSHA Town Hall, Monday March 25
The SSHA officers invite SSHA members to attend a Zoom town hall on Monday March 25 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm EST to discuss and answer questions about the four Executive Committee motions passed on December 20, 2023, and February 8, 2024. The zoom link is here (Meeting ID: 895 1708 6578 | Password: 602250).
These motions concern our association journal, Social Science History, specifically editorial procedure guidelines, journal scope and the editor model. These motions have been posted on the SSHA website.
2024 Annual Conference Submissions Now Open
SSHA is now accepting paper and session submissions for the 2024 Annual Conference. Please visit our submission portal ssha2024.ssha.org to submit a paper or session proposal by March 22, 2024.
Submission Portal
SSHA Call for Papers
50th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association
Toronto, ON, Canada, October 31 - November 3, 2024.