June 10, 2025 - The Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world, today announced its 2025 winners. The nine winners, whose work explores the human past through exceptional scholarship and research, will each receive $300,000 (USD) in recognition of their achievements and to support their future endeavors. The nine winners, all in early and mid stages of their career, are researchers and filmmakers who work in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The winners are selected after an open nomination process by a global committee of historians that changes annually. This year’s selection committee members are affiliated with leading academic institutions including the University of Toronto, the Cyprus Institute, and the University of Cambridge.
“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 son of Dan David , the founder of the Prize. “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. We are also particularly excited that two winners this year work in the film industry, helping bring scholarly findings to broader audiences and thus highlighting the importance of historical research for society at large.”
The 2025 Dan David Prize winners are:
“We’re delighted to add another nine outstanding individuals to our growing community of scholars, curators and filmmakers from around the globe,” said Professor Tim Cole, historian and Academic Advisor to the Dan David Prize . “They will join the 27 previous winners who, together, research varied aspects of the human past. The originality of the questions being asked and the methods deployed show how archaeologists and historians are creatively working within and across disciplines to offer new understandings of our collective past.”
The 2025 winners recently received the Prize at a gathering in Italy. Nominations for the 2026 Dan David Prize are now being accepted online .
The Dan David Prize was first established in 2001 by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Dan David, to reward innovative and interdisciplinary work that contributed to humanity. In 2021, the Prize was relaunched with a focus on historical research, honoring the founder’s passion for history and archaeology. It now rewards early and mid-career scholars to help them fulfill their potential at a time when historical knowledge and scholarship are under attack, many university departments are threatened with closure, and budgets for research, archives, libraries and museums are being slashed or eliminated.
The late Dan David lived through persecution in Nazi-occupied and then Communist Romania, becoming an accomplished photographer and later an entrepreneur and philanthropist. David was fascinated by automatic instant photography, and he built a company that introduced countries around the globe to the automatic photo booth. Dan had a keen interest in history and archaeology, which feature in many of the projects of the Dan David Foundation. His full bio is available here .
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About the Dan David Prize
The Dan David Prize , endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University, is the largest history prize in the world. Dan David, the founder of the Prize, believed that knowledge of the past enriches us and helps us grapple with the challenges of the present, and is crucial for reimagining our collective future. At a time of diminishing support for the humanities, the Prize celebrates the next generation of outstanding historians, archaeologists, curators and digital humanists. Each year, up to nine researchers are awarded $300,000 each in recognition of their achievements and to support their future endeavors.
To learn more about Dan David, the Prize and the 2025 winners, visit www.dandavidprize.org .
Media Contact: DKCDanDavidPrize@dkcnews.com