Submissions Are Closed

Award Type

Award for Scholarly and Professional Distinction

The Association has honored foreign scholars since 1885, when the AHA awarded Leopold von Ranke with its first testimonial of honorary membership.

According to the selection criteria, recipients of honorary memberships must be scholars working outside the United States who are distinguished for their work in the field of history.

The Committee on Honorary Foreign Members and Awards for Scholarly Distinction will serve as the jury and will recommend an individual for approval by the Council. The committee consists of the president, president-elect, and the immediate past president. The honoree will be announced at the Association’s annual meeting.

Current Recipient

Gábor Klaniczay, Central European University, Hungary

Gábor Klaniczay is perhaps the most respected medieval historian from east central Europe, someone who during the declining years of communist oppression became an intellectual force not only in Hungary but in the West. He has pushed scholarship in new directions through his curiosity about how people became saints, accepted miracles, embraced visions, and practiced healing magic and witchcraft. He has not, however, isolated himself in the intellectual safety of the Middle Ages but promoted free thought in Hungary as a long-standing member of the faculty and an administrator at Central European University (CEU), a private institution that has been a major force for an open society in opposition to the authoritarian regime of Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz Party.