Nigerian archaeologist and scholar Abidemi Babatunde Babalola and Italian-Ghanaian-American filmmaker and artist Fred Kuwornu have been named one of the 2025 recipients of the Dan David Prize, the world’s largest award for historical scholarship. They will receive $300,000 USD each in recognition of their contributions to historical research.

Abidemi Babatunde Babalola’s research has transformed global understanding of early African technological innovation. By using material science and archaeological methods, he uncovered evidence that glass production in Africa predated European colonialism and was developed independently—challenging long-standing Eurocentric narratives. His discoveries reposition West African forest communities as vital agents in the pre-15th-century trans-Saharan trade through the production and distribution of glass beads, what he calls “the glass bead roads.”

Babalola earned his PhD from Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA. He also holds MA and BA degrees from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Ibadan in Ibadan, Nigeria. He has published extensively in well-known academic journals, including the African Archaeological Review, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Archaeological Science, International Journal of African Historical Studies; and received numerous awards, including the Shanghai Archaeology Forum Discovery Award (2019), the World Archaeology Congress (WAC) Blaze O’Connor Award (2022), and the Conservation and Heritage Site Award from the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) (2025).

Currently a research archaeologist at the British Museum, he leads the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) Archaeology Project in Benin City, Nigeria. He also directs the Archaeology of Glass project in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and is currently curating a mobile exhibition titled “Science, Technology, and Invention in the Empire of Ile-Ife”, which will tour major cities across Southwest Nigeria. Babalola’s work continues to highlight Africa’s intellectual contributions to global heritage and deepen public engagement with the continent’s complex past.

Fred Kuwornu is a socially engaged artist, filmmaker, educator, and cultural innovator whose work spans continents and disciplines. With triple citizenship—Italian, Ghanaian, and American—Kuwornu brings a distinctly transnational perspective to his creative and scholarly practice. Deeply influenced by his African heritage, his work explores the intersections of identity, race, and historical memory, challenging dominant narratives and expanding the boundaries of contemporary visual storytelling.

Kuwornu holds a degree in political science from the University of Bologna. He began his film career working on Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna (2008), which inspired his own documentary Inside Buffalo (2010), about African American soldiers in World War II. His subsequent films include 18 Ius Soli (2012), a powerful exploration of citizenship rights for second-generation immigrants in Italy, and Blaxploitalian (2016), which chronicles the underrepresented history of Black actors in Italian cinema from 1915 onward.

In 2013, Kuwornu founded Do the Right Films, a production and distribution company committed to socially relevant storytelling through documentaries, exhibitions, and film festivals such as the Black Europe Film Festival. His most recent work, We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, was featured at the 60th Venice Art Biennale in 2024. Through his curation and filmmaking, Kuwornu brings hidden histories and marginalized voices to the forefront, transforming the archive into a dynamic tool for cultural and political engagement.

Babalole and Kuwornu join the ranks of other celebrated African recipients of the Dan David Prize, including Professor Saheed Aderinto (Nigeria) and Chao Tayiana Maina (Kenya) in 2024.

The other eight winners are:

  • Mackenzie Cooley (Hamilton College), whose research traces how Renaissance practices of breeding and “bioprospecting” shaped ideas of race and dominion over nature.

  • Bar Kribus (Tel Aviv University), who investigates the religious and political history of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) through archaeology and oral history.

  • Dmitri Levitin (University of Utrecht and Oxford), a historian of premodern knowledge systems whose work spans ancient Mesopotamia to Enlightenment Europe.

  • Beth Lew-Williams (Princeton University), who explores the racialized legal structures that shaped Chinese immigrant life in the U.S., culminating in her forthcoming book John Doe Chinaman.

  • Hannah Marcus (Harvard University), a scholar of scientific culture and censorship in early modern Europe, now completing a new study on aging and medicine in Renaissance Italy.

  • Alina Șerban, a trailblazing Roma filmmaker, writer, and actress who confronts historical silencing and racism through visual storytelling. She is currently working on her first feature film.

  • Caroline Sturdy Colls (University of Huddersfield), a forensic archaeologist renowned for uncovering hidden evidence at Holocaust sites including Treblinka, blending science, history, and ethical remembrance.

The Dan David Prize, endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University, was reimagined in 2021 to focus exclusively on historical research. Each year, up to nine early- and mid-career researchers are awarded for their potential to reshape our understanding of the past.

The 2025 winners were honored at a recent ceremony in Italy. Nominations for the 2026 Dan David Prize are now open and can be submitted via the official website.

Congratulations to Babalola and Kuwornu on this incredible achievement!