The 2024 Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History
Richard Deswarte (1965-2021) was one of the founding convenors of the Digital History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, an advocate for the value and importance of digital history, and an irreplaceable member of the community of digital historians in the UK and beyond.
This annual prize, established in his memory, celebrates the best of digital history internationally. It offers an award of £1,000 for the best output in digital history published in the 17 months prior to the submission deadline.
Prize Winners
2024: Ruth Ahnert and Sebastian Ahnert, Tudor Networks of Power (Oxford University Press, 2023).
2023: Gábor Mihály Tóth, Tim Hempel, Krisha Somandepalli, and Shri Narayanan for their article ‘Studying Large-Scale Behavioral Differences in Auschwitz-Birkenau with Simulation of Gendered Narratives’, Digital Humanities Quarterly 16:3 (2022).
2022: Joris van Eijnatten and Pim Huijnen for their paper ‘Something Happened to the Future: Reconstructing Temporalities in Dutch Parliamentary Debate, 1814–2018’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 16:2 (2021), 52–82, doi: 10.3167/choc.2021.160204
Eligibility
The Prize is open to researchers anywhere in the world, but submissions must be in English.
Outputs considered within the scope of the Prize:
[i] are published works (articles, books, book chapters), including conference presentations when published in formal conference proceedings. We interpret this widely, to include data papers and other non-traditional formats. The test is of ‘finishedness’ rather than format, and so blog posts, informally published working papers and the like will only be considered under exceptional circumstances. Entries may or may not have been peer-reviewed.
*and*
[ii] make a substantial contribution to the historiography of the particular field concerned, or intervene in debates concerning methodology or other aspects of the development of the discipline, its sources, and its institutional and professional contexts. Writings that are mainly reports of progress in a particular project or output will not normally be considered.
To be eligible, outputs submitted must have been published in the 17 months prior to the 31 May closing date for entries.
Timetable for submissions
Submissions for the 2025 Prize will open in February 2025.
Submissions may be made by the/an author, however you do not have to be the author of an output to submit it to the prize. Note that as part of the submission process, you will be asked to describe (in no more than 150 words) the main contribution of the work to the existing historiography. For monographs (or other long-form outputs), we recommend that the submitter specifies the part(s) of the work that the panel should pay attention to in particular. For any queries, please contact James Baker in the first instance.
Submission are limited to one per person.
The closing date for entries for the 2025 Prize will be 31 May 2025.
Award of the Prize
All submissions are considered by an international panel of judges, convened by an organising committee [OC]. They are:
- Freja Howat (University of Sussex)
- Gerben Zaagsma (University of Luxembourg)
- Gábor Mihály Tóth (University of Luxembourg)
- Grace Di Meo (Oxford Brookes University)
- James Baker (University of Southampton) [OC]
- Nadine Zubair (University of East Anglia)
- Peter Webster (Webster Research and Consulting) [OC]
- Pim Huijnen (Utrecht University)
- Tessa Hauswedell (University College London) [OC]
- Uli Tiedau (University College London) [OC]
Former judges and organisers of the prize were:
- Jane Winters (School of Advanced Study, University of London) [OC]
- Matt Phillpott [OC]
- Joris van Eijnatten (Netherlands eScience Center)
- Katie McDonough (Alan Turing Institute)
- Lea Beiermann (Maastricht University)
- Zoe Alker (University of Lancaster)
The Prize will be awarded at the first IHR Digital History seminar of the autumn term, and the winner will be invited to give a paper or lead a session based on, but not confined to, their winning submission.
The Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History is funded with generous support from the School of Advanced Study, University of London, the Programming Historian, Webster Research and Consulting, and Professor Tim Hitchcock.
If you have any queries or questions, please contact James Baker in the first instance.
