Three Women Historians in Higher Education Receive Prestigious Dan David Prize

Every year, The Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world, recognizes a group of early-to-mid career historians for their outstanding achievements that illuminate the past in bold and creative ways. For 2024, nine scholars received the award and $300,000 in support of their future academic endeavors. Three of this year’s nine awardees are women working in American higher education.

Keisha N. Blain is a professor of Africana studies and professor of history at Brown University. Her research specializes in African American history, the modern African diaspora, and women’s and gender studies. She has authored several edited volumes and award-winning books including Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America (Beacon Press, 2021). In addition to her role with Brown University, she serves as a columnist for MSNBC.

Dr. Blain is a graduate of Binghamton University of the State University of New York System, where she double-majored in history and Africana studies. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from Princeton University.

Cécile Fromont is a professor of history of art and architecture at Harvard University. Throughout her career, she has studied the visual, material, and religious cultures of Africa, Latin America, and Europe during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Her recent work centers around the aesthetic connections between Europe and Africa, as created and sustained by the Atlantic slave trade. She has authored several renowned publications including The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo (University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022).

Dr. Fromont is a graduate of Sciences-Po Paris where she studied cultural policy and management and international relations. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history of art and architecture from Harvard University.

Kathryn Olivarius is an assistant professor of history at Stanford University in California. She studies nineeenth-century United States history, with a specific interest in the antebellum South, the Caribbean, slavery, capitalism, and disease. Her first book, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Harvard University Press, 2022), earned her national recognition from numerous institutions and professional organizations.

Dr. Olivarius is a cum laude graduate of Yale University, where she majored in history. She holds a master’s degree in United States history and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Oxford in England.