History Prize for Recent Trinity Junior Research Fellow

Dr Mirjam Brusius has been selected as one of eight winners of the 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world. Dr Brusius was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity while holding an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship before going on to her current post at the German Historical Institute London.

The Dan David Prize is given to outstanding early and mid-career scholars and practitioners in the historical disciplines. A selection committee of eminent scholars in the historical fields assessed hundreds of nominations from around the world as part of a rigorous process to select the winners, who will each receive $300,000 to recognize their achievements to date and support their future work.

Dr Brusius is a cultural historian and historian of science with an interest in the circulation of objects and images in and between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She specializes in the history of photography, museums, collecting, and race in colonial contexts. Her work examines the trajectories of museum objects, including issues around repatriation, where objects come from and end up, and why some remain in storage. She also explores the misuse of antiquities for race science, and the afterlife of objects beyond museums. As co-founder of the ‘100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object’ grassroots project, Dr Brusius combines historical research with curatorial practice to facilitate a more egalitarian dialogue between Western museums and communities of origin.

Dr Brusius says of winning the prize: ‘The prize is a huge honour but it also comes with responsibilities. In line with my research interests, I intend to use the award to champion research and collaborations with scholars from the Global South, often marginalized in Western historical discourse and museums. A part of the award will be donated to support smaller initiatives that focus on the preservation of historical, photographic, and heritage archives, and on Jewish-Arab dialogue in the Middle East – a region that has long been a focus of my work.’

Established in 2001 by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Dan David, the Prize is endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University. The nine winners will be honoured at the 2022 Dan David Prize Award Ceremony held in May.