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.

2020 Winner: James Poskett, Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920. University of Chicago Press (April 26, 2019).

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.

2022 Winner: Martha Wilfahrt Precolonial Legacies in Postcolonial Politics. Representation and Redistribution in Decentralized West Africa.Cambridge University Press (August 2021).

2022 Honorable Mention: Elisabeth Anderson Agents of Reform: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State. Princeton University Press (October 12, 2021).

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

2022 Winner: Hyun Hye Bae and Lance Freeman “Residential Segregation at the Dawn of the Great Migration: Evidence from the 1910 and 1920 Census.” Social Science History Volume 45, Issue 1 (Spring 2021), pp. 27-53.

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.

Learn more and see a list of past winners »