Dan David Prize names 9 historians as winners of 2025 award

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Dan David Prize will award nine historians, archaeologists and filmmakers from around the world with $300,000 for their research, the foundation announced Tuesday.

The award winners are researching a vast array of topics, from the notebook of Isaac Newton’s roommate to the history and culture of Ethiopian Jews. The academics recently received the prize during a ceremony in Italy.

The prize, based at Tel Aviv University, is awarded each year to academics in the early and middle stages of their careers who are conducting “innovative research on the human past.”

“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,” said Ariel David, whose father, Dan David, founded the prize in 2001.

One of the winners is Beth Lew-Williams of Princeton University, a historian whose work has focused on how legal discrimination impacted Chinese immigration to the US and the experience of Chinese immigrants.

Another is Fred Kudjo Kuwornu of Do The Right Films, a filmmaker whose work focuses on Black representation and identity. His recent film, We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, was presented at the 2024 Biennale in Venice.

Another awardee is Dmitri Levitin of the University of Utrecht and All Souls College, Oxford, a history of scholarship who is collaborating on research into the newly discovered notebook of Isaac Newton’s university roommate.

Other winners are Abidemi Babatunde Babalola of the British Museum, Mackenzie Cooley of Hamilton College, Bar Kribus of Tel Aviv University, Hannah Marcus, Harvard University, Alina Șerban, Founder of Untold Stories, and Caroline Sturdy Colls, University of Huddersfield.

Among the ranks of past winners are Canadian author Margaret Atwood, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. infectious disease expert.

The award was originally launched to focus on academic work that rewarded humanity. It has since shifted to focus specifically on those who study the past, with the idea that the prize will greatly enhance their research abilities.