The American Historical Association offers the Raymond J. Cunningham Prize annually for the best article published in a journal written by an undergraduate student.
The current prize amount is $500 each to the author and journal.
Eligibility
The prize selection committee has typically given preference to articles that incorporate primary sources. The article must be published in a journal between May 1, 2024, and April 30, 2025.
Application Process
Log into your MY AHA account at www.historians.org/myaha and click “Available Application Forms” in the AHA Awards, Grants, and Jobs section. If you don’t have an account, create one for free at www.historians.org/createaccount. If nominating someone else, select the Nominate button and search for the nominee’s existing record or create a new record.
- Fill in the application form, which includes the nominee’s contact information and the name of the article, journal, and faculty advisor.
- Upload an Application Packet as a single PDF. Include the following documents:
- Letter of support (no more than 2 pages)
- Copy of the article
Only ONE article from a specific journal may be nominated each year.
Please Note: The competition will open in mid-March. Entries must be received by May 15, 2025, to be eligible for the 2025 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2025 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2026 AHA annual meeting in Chicago.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
Raymond J. Cunningham
Raymond J. Cunningham was an associate professor of history at Fordham University. He was an authority on American historian Herbert Baxter Adams.
Past Recipients
Current Recipient
Becca De Los Santos, Emory University
“Inversion of the Top-Down Operation: Enslaved Voices and French Abolitionism in 1840s Senegal,” Herodotus 34 (Spring 2024)
Faculty adviser: Richard Roberts, Stanford University
Becca De Los Santos’s impressive research in Senegal and France provides a nuanced view on the liberation of enslaved people in the French colony of Senegal. Using testimony from an 1844 commission report, De Los Santos puts the previously ignored voices of those enslaved in Senegal at the forefront of abolition. They proved to French authorities that instead of being a “benign” system, enslaved people in Senegal longed for freedom.