AUSTIN, Texas — The Dan David Foundation has awarded a 2023 Dan David Prize to Adam Clulow, a professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. The prize is the largest in the world for historical studies, and the foundation recognizes up to nine outstanding early and mid-career scholars and practitioners in the historical disciplines annually. Awards will be conferred at a ceremony in Tel Aviv, Israel, in May 2023.
“I was delighted and deeply honored to receive the Dan David Prize,” Clulow said. “History as a discipline can sometimes feel under siege. The Dan David Prize represents a remarkable investment in history and in the careers of early and mid-career scholars and practitioners at the precise moment in which they can most benefit from such resources. This prize will enable me to aim higher, to seek out new audiences, and to work with more students operating at the intersection between technology and history.”
The $300,000 David Prize will broadly support Clulow’s ongoing academic and digital humanities work. He is a historian of early modern Asia and a digital humanities specialist. His work is concerned broadly with the transnational circulation of ideas, people, practices and commodities across East and Southeast Asia. He is a director of JapanLab and is the creator of multiple award-winning digital humanities projects. He is also the editor of Not Even Past, a digital magazine with a global reach of about half a million readers annually. His recent books include “Amboina, 1623: Fear and Conspiracy on the Edge of Empire” (Columbia University Press, 2019) and “The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan” (Columbia University Press, 2016).
“The Dan David Prize is the type of international recognition that Adam Clulow’s ongoing contributions and innovative projects demand,” said Ann Huff Stevens, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. “It speaks to the breadth and impact of Dr. Clulow’s work on the fields of history and digital humanities at large, on UT Austin, and on our students.”
The winners were selected from hundreds of nominations submitted by colleagues, institutions and the public in an open nomination process. The finalists were chosen by a global committee of experts.
The Dan David Prize, endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University, focuses on historical research and rewards emerging scholars, aiming to help academic and public historians fulfill their potential at a time when support for the humanities is dwindling.
