Honorary Foreign Member
AHA members are invited to nominate distinguished foreign historians for this award. The Association has honored foreign scholars since 1885, when the AHA awarded Leopold von Ranke with its first testimonial of honorary membership. See the list of past recipients.
According to the selection criteria, recipients of honorary memberships must be foreign scholars who are distinguished for their work in the field of history and who have markedly assisted the work of American historians in the scholar’s country. The AHA Council encourages nominations that address the need for broader geographic coverage; in recent years most nominations and honorees have been from western Europe. 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.
Nominations may be submitted at any time, but materials must be submitted by November 1, 2019, to be considered for the 2020 award, which will be presented at the January 2021 AHA annual meeting in Seattle. It will be necessary to resubmit recommendations made earlier if they are to be considered again; files will not be reactivated. A complete nomination should include a letter of nomination that contains specific details addressing the criteria listed above, a two-page CV of the nominee with a summary of major publications, and a minimum of two supporting letters of recommendation. The package should not exceed 20 pages. Please email all submission materials to awards@historians.org and be sure to include “Honorary Foreign Member: [Nominee’s Name]” in the subject line.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
2018 Honorary Foreign Member
Betty Wood, Girton College, University of Cambridge
Betty Wood is reader emerita, faculty of history, at the University of Cambridge, and life fellow, Girton College, Cambridge. She was one of the founders of the British Group of Early American Historians (BGEAH), which is credited with jump-starting the study of early America in the United Kingdom. Wood taught generations of undergraduate and graduate students, supervising 19 PhD students who now teach on both sides of the Atlantic. The writer of one letter of nomination remarked, “No scholar has done more to develop and sustain the study of early American history in the United Kingdom.” In addition to her scholarship and teaching, Wood has generously assisted Americans researching and studying in Britain, especially graduate students. She established connections between the BGEAH and continental European scholars of early American history, making for major international linkages, most notably with various universities in Paris. Fittingly, as a pioneer in Atlantic history, she helped bring together historians of the Caribbean and Louisiana and those of Britain, South Carolina, and Georgia.