Dan David prize goes to 9 historians, archaeologists and filmmakers
The $300,000 award helps early and mid-career scholars who research the past, as many university departments are threatened with closure and budgets are slashed or eliminated
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Historians, archaeologists and filmmakers were named as winners of the annual Dan David Prize, honoring innovative research on the human past.
Each of the nine winners, all in the early and mid-stages of their careers, working in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, will receive $300,000.
“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 the son of Dan David, the founder of the Prize.
The Dan David Prize was established in 2001 by the late Israeli entrepreneur and philanthropist Dan David, to reward innovative and interdisciplinary work that contributed to humanity.
Ten years later, the prize was relaunched with a focus on historical research, and now rewards early and mid-career scholars to help them at a time when many university departments are threatened with closure, and budgets for research, archives, libraries and museums are being slashed or eliminated.
The 2025 Dan David Prize winners include Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, an anthropological archaeologist at the British Museum who uses material science to uncover the history of technological development in premodern West Africa, and Mackenzie Cooley from Hamilton College, a historian of science and medicine in the early modern Hispanic world.
Winner Bar Kribus from Tel Aviv University is an Israeli archaeologist specializing in Ethiopian archaeology and the history and material culture of the Ethiopian Jews, while Fred Kudjo Kuwornu is a filmmaker and educator whose work is deeply influenced by his African heritage.
Two more winners are Dmitri Levitin of University of Utrecht and All Souls College, Oxford, a historian whose work explores how sciences and humanities interacted to create systems of knowledge in the early modern world, and Beth Lew-Williams, from Princeton University, a historian specializing in the study of Asian Americans.
Winner Hannah Marcus from Harvard University is a historian whose work focuses on the scientific culture of early modern Europe, while Alina Șerban is a film and theater director whose work examines the history, culture and identity of the Roma, and Caroline Sturdy Colls, of the University of Huddersfield, is a professor of Holocaust archaeology and genocide investigation.
The 2025 winners recently received their prizes at a gathering in Italy. Nominations for the 2026 Dan David Prize are now being accepted online.
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