Awards

2024 FHHS prizes and submission deadlines (see below for a description of the awards)

FHHS/JHBS John C. Burnham Early Career Award: The submission deadline will be June 1, 2024. Please submit your CV and manuscript (both in PDF format) to eherman@uoregon.edu

FHHS Dissertation Prize. The submission deadline will be June 1, 2024. Please submit your article (in PDF format) to eherman@uoregon.edu

Guidelines for all FHHS prizes (adopted by FHHS Steering Committee, 11/03/2022)
FHHS prize committee members will bear in mind the following questions when considering manuscripts:

  1. Does it engage in a meaningful way with the extant scholarship on the topic?
  2. Is the argument clearly articulated and thoroughly explored?
  3. Is it grounded in original primary source research?
  4. Does it meaningfully consider non-elite actors, and/or the implications of work in science outside of scientists’ immediate context?

FHHS/JHBS John C. Burnham Early Career Award (awarded annually)

The Forum for History of Human Science (FHHS) and the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science (JHBS) encourage researchers in their early careers to submit unpublished manuscripts for the annual John C. Burnham Early Career Award, named in honor of this prominent historian of the human sciences and past-editor of JHBS. The publisher provides the author of the paper an honorarium of US $500 at the time the manuscript is accepted for publication by JHBS. (see details below).

Guidelines for the award: Unpublished manuscripts in English dealing with any aspect of the history of the human sciences. The paper should meet the publishing guidelines of the JHBS. Eligible scholars are those who do not hold tenured university positions (or equivalent) and are not more than seven years beyond the Ph.D. Graduate students and independent scholars are encouraged to submit. Manuscripts may be re-submitted for the prize, as long as they have not been published or submitted to another journal and the submitting scholar is still in early career. The manuscript cannot be submitted to any other journal and still qualify for this award. Please also submit a CV. Past winners are not eligible to submit again.

The winning submission will be announced at the annual History of Science Society meeting. (If there are no submissions of suitable quality in any given year, no award will be given for that year.) The winning article can then be submitted to JHBS with FHHS endorsement and will undergo the regular review process. When the article is accepted for publication, the publisher of JHBS will announce the award and issue a US $500 honorarium. Although it is technically possible that someone might win the Burnham Early Career Award and not receive the honorarium, FHHS and JHBS do not expect this to happen under normal circumstances.

2023 Burnham Early Career Award Prize: David Robertson,Tinkering Toward Reliability: The WHO and the Standardization of Psychiatric Diagnosis
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2023 Burnham Early Career Award Prize, honorable mention: Peter Scoblic, “Solving for Uncertainty: Frank Knight, Herman Kahn, and the Pursuit of Judgment”
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Past awards »


FHHS Article Prize (awarded in odd-numbered years)

The Forum for History of Human Science awards a biennial prize (a nonmonetary honor) for the best article published recently on some aspect of the history of the human sciences. The article prize is awarded in odd-numbered years. The winner of the prize is announced at the annual History of Science Society meeting.

Entries are encouraged from authors in any discipline, as long as the work is related to the history of the human sciences, broadly construed, and is in English. To be eligible, the article must have been published within the three years previous to the year of the award. Preference will be given to authors who have not won the award previously.

2023 Prize co-awardee: Nana Osei Quarshie, “Psychiatry on a Shoestring: West Africa and the Global Movements of Deinstitutionalization,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 96, 2022, no. 2:237-265.
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2023 Prize co-awardee: Isaiah Lorado Wilner, “Body Knowledge, Part I: Dance, Anthropology, and the Erasure of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 83, No. 1 (January 2022).
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2023 Prize honorable mention: Kate Ramsey, “Powers of Imagination and Legal Regimes against “Obeah” in the Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth- Century British Caribbean, Osiris, vol. 36 (2021).
Standardization of Psychiatric Diagnosis”
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Past awards »


FHHS Dissertation Prize (awarded in even-numbered years)

The Forum for History of Human Science awards a biennial prize of US $250 for the best recent doctoral dissertation on some aspect of the history of the human sciences.The competition takes place during even-numbered years. The winner of the prize is announced at the annual History of Science Society meeting.

Entries are encouraged from authors in any discipline, as long as the work is related to the history of the human sciences, broadly construed. To be eligible, the dissertation must be in English and have been formally filed within the three years previous to the year of the award. A dissertation may be submitted more than once, as long as it meets the submission requirements.

2022 Dissertation Prize Winner: Charles Petersen, “Meritocracy in America, 1885-2007,” Harvard University, 2020. Citation

2022 Dissertation Prize, Honorable Mention: Duygu Yildirim, “The Age of the Perplexed: Translating Nature and Bodies Between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, 1650-1730,” Stanford University, 2021. Citation

Past awards »