Nine researchers were named Tuesday night as winners of the 2026 Dan David Prize, billed as the world’s largest history prize. Each will receive $300,000 to recognize outstanding research on the human past and support future work. The winners are early-career historians and archaeologists whose work ranges across the Americas, East Asia, Europe, and even the impact of events in outer space on human history.
This year marks five years since the prize was relaunched as a history-focused award. With the 2026 class, 45 researchers and professionals from six continents have now received the prize, which has distributed more than $13.5 million for breakthrough historical scholarship. The winners were selected through an open nomination process by an international expert committee that included academics from Oxford University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Sciences Po.
The 2026 laureates are Max Bergholz of Concordia University in Montreal, R. Isabela Morales, a public historian of slavery and emancipation in the United States, Roland Betancourt of the University of California, Irvine, Verena Meier of Heidelberg University and the Technical University of Berlin, Matthew Champion of the University of Melbourne, Howard Chiang of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University, Andrew Lipman of Barnard College, Columbia University, and Giancarlo Marcone of UTEC. Their work covers subjects including Balkan violence and memory, African American family history, Byzantine art and gender, antisemitic persecution of Sinti and Roma, medieval ideas of time, Sinophone studies, climate history, Indigenous Atlantic history, and Inca-era settlement patterns in Peru.
Ariel David, a Dan David Prize board member and the founder’s son, said the relaunch was based on the belief that supporting historians at key career stages can have lasting impact. He said past recipients have used the grants for essential research tools, films, and community programs, and that this year’s winners continue that tradition. Prize adviser Tim Cole said the award gives scholars freedom to pursue independent research at a time when humanities fields face political pressure and funding cuts. Nominations for the 2027 prize are now open at www.dandavidprize.org/nominate.
