2022-2023

• Undergraduate Division (winner): Catarina Vala , Manhattan College, Yonkers, New York, “Miracle of the Sun, Divided by Class: Why the Rural Response to the Miracle of the Sun Confused Portuguese Elite during World War I”

• Graduate Division (winner): Alexander Clayton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, “That Ancient and Modern Wonder”: Giraffes, Imperialism, and the Making of the American Menagerie, 1830–1840”

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2021–2022

• Undergraduate division (winner): Estey Chen, University of Washington, Seattle, “Cracks in the Bandung Spirit: The 1962 Sino-Indian War and Decline of Third World Solidarity”

• Undergraduate division (runner up): Wendi Zhou, University of Washington, “’Translating Guilt to Commitment’: Racial and Queer Intersections in Afro-German Berlin, 1981–1992″

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2020–2021

• Undergraduate division: Noah Hull, Hawaii Pacific University, “Who Wants to Live Forever: Freddie Mercury’s Statue in Switzerland”

• Graduate division: Andrew Merz, Hawaii Pacific University, “’The British Middle East Campaign in World War I: A Brief Historiography of an Oil Origin Story”

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2019-2020

• Graduate division: Jian Gao, University of Texas Austin, “Political Mobilizations and Cultural Spaces: Transnational Chinese Associations in Mexico, 1922 – 1945″

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2018–2019

• Undergraduate division: Julia Fine, Harvard University, “Growing British India: The Colonial Biopolitics of the Potato”

• Graduate division: Julie van den Hout, San Francisco State University, “’The Seas But Join the Nations They Divide’: Connecting Science and Humanity on the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic through Messages in Bottles.”

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2017–2018

• Undergraduate division: Whitney Spake, Troy University, “Among the Steppes: A Societal Study of the Soviet Past in Kyrgyzstan”

• Graduate division: Luke Scalone, Northeastern University, “ French Fascism & Empire : The Case of Tunisia”

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2016–2017

• Undergraduate division: Robert Nowland, University of North Carolina at Asheville, “The Game of United States Diplomacy within the Ottoman Empire: How the United States Interests in the Ottoman Empire Delayed Its Entrance into the Great War”

• Graduate division: Rachel Schrottman, Northeastern University, “ Françafrique : The French Role in Rwanda”

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2015–2016

• Undergraduate division: Beninio McDonough-Tranza, Freie Universität Berlin , “The Construction of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in a Semi-Colonial Community: The Case of Japan Punch, 1862–1883”

• Graduate division: Rachel Schrottman, Northeastern University, “Impact of Belgian Colonization on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda”

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2014–2015​

• Undergraduate division: Emilia Antiglio, University of Warwick, “The Diffusion of Porcelaine des Indes in Eighteenth-Century France: From Lorient to Paris and Beyond, 1720–1775”

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2013–2014​

• Undergraduate division (co-winners):

  • Matthew Wallin, Northern Kentucky University, “Intellectual Crosscurrents of the Black Atlantic: Pan Africanism and Civil Rights in the Time of the Cold War”

  • Jakub Mscichowski, Simon Fraser University, “From Avalokitesvara to Guanyin and the Maria Kannon: Charting the Roles of Syncretism in East Asian Christianities”

 

2012–2013

• Undergraduate division (co-winners):

  • Priya Shah, Chapman University, “Language, Discipline, and Power: The Extirpation of Idolatry in Colonial Peru and Indigenous Resistance”

  • Christopher Heap, University of Warwick, “Silks, Silver and Contraband: The Eastwards Manila Galleon in the Global Economy, 1571–1815”

 

2011–2012

• Undergraduate division: Hyeok Hweon Kang, Emory University, “Big Heads and Buddhist Demons: The Korean Military Revolution and the Northern Expeditions of 1654 and 1658”

• Graduate division: Kathryn Hain, University of Utah, “The Mediterranean Trunk Line to Slavery: The Early Medieval Slave Trade in Europeans”

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2010–2011​​

• Undergraduate division: Nathanael Cameron Hood, Ursinus College, “The Roots of Mahayana Buddism”

• Graduate division (co-winners):

• Andrew Christian Peterson, University of Hawaii at Manoa, “What Really Made the World Go Around? Indio Contributions to the

Acapulco–Manila Galleon Trade”

• Adam P. J. Witten, University of Hawaii at Manoa, “Cross-Fertilizing the Botanical Sciences: Japan’s Role in the Formation of

Disciplinary Science”

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2009–2010​

• Undergraduate division: Samantha Huang, University of California, Berkeley, “Technologies of Chinese Smuggling: Migratory Knowledge and Networks, 1882–1924“

• Graduate division: Gregory Rosenthal, Stony Brook University, “Boki’s Predicament: The Material Culture and Environmental History of Hawaiian Sandalwood, 1811–1830”

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2008–2009​

• Undergraduate division: Jonathan D. Garon, University of Rochester, “A Tainted Peace: The Failure of De-Nazification in Occupied Germany”

 

2007–2008​

• Undergraduate division: Tim Davies, University of Warwick, “What Did Indian Merchants Do? Gujarat and the Trade to East Africa in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”

• Graduate division: Gail Marlow Taylor, California State University, Fullerton, “The Book of Secrets: Alchemy and the Laboratory Manual from Al-Razi to Libavius, 920–1597”

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2006–2007

• Undergraduate division: Rigel A. Behrens, Northern Kentucky University, “Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, and the Cold War: The Latin American Church’s Response to a Changing World”

• Undergraduate division runners-up (co-recipients):

• Taylor Burton, Columbus State University, “Bwiti: A Syncretic Faith of Modern Africa”

• Kevin Michael Smith, University of California, Irvine, “Coterminous Companions: Nationalism, Class, and Anational Arab–Jewish

Cooperation in Mandatory Palestine”

• Graduate division: Preston Bakshi, University of California, Irvine, “Decolonizing Medicine: Professionalization and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Independent India”

 

2005–2006

• Undergraduate division: Robert Cole, University of Richmond, “Power and Performance in Bombay’s Victoria Terminus”

• Graduate division: Jeffer Daykin, Portland State University, “Progressive Pedagogy in Rural China: Tao Xingzhi’s Xiaozhuang Experimental School as an Implementation of John Dewey’s Educational Philosophy”

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2004–2005

• Undergraduate division: Kyle Jackson, Simon Fraser University, “Preface to a Brief History of Modern Humans”

• Graduate division: Phillip Sinitiere, University of Houston, “Navigating the Indian Ocean: Exploring the Textures of an African Diaspora”

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2003–2004​

• Undergraduate division: Elizabeth Kamradt, Northern Kentucky University, “Colonial Jamestown and Cape Town: A Discussion of Early Changes and Lastinf Outcomes”

• Graduate division: Luke Clossey, University of California, Berkeley, “Distant Rites: The Jesuit China Mission and Its Global Ritual Community”

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2002–2003​

• Undergraduate division: Kathleen Vazoulas, Marist College, “Complexity of Relations: Mexico and the United States, 1938–1942”

• Graduate division: Christopher J. Lee, Stanford University, “Current Concepts in the Red Atlantic: World History as Political Practice in Cape Town, South Africa, 1943–48”

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2001–2002

• Undergraduate division: 

  • Nadine Leon, Sacred Heart University, “The Saint Domingue Revolution: The Impact of the Revolution on Colonial France, 1789–1815”

• Undergraduate division runners-up:

  • Laurie Lahey, Rowan College, “Time After Time: China, Europe, and the Fate of the Mechanical Clock”

  • Kirk Lawler, North Central College, “The Jesuit Incursion into Ming China: Science and Humanism in the Service of God”

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2000–2001

• Undergraduate division: Thomas D. Pomenti, Ursinus College, “Genocidal and Non-Genocidal Cleansings: Why a Perpetrating Regime Will Choose Either Total Murder or Mass Expulsion as Its Means of Population Cleansing”

• Graduate division: Mary Ann R. Gabbert, University of Texas, El Paso, “El Paso, A Sight for Sore Eyes: Medical and Legal Aspects of Syrian Immigration, 1906–1907”