Established in 1990 and initiated in 1993, the Paul Hair Prize honors Paul E.H. Hair (1926-2001) of the University of Liverpool. The prize was made possible by a generous gift from Dr. David Henige in 2005. The prize is awarded in odd years to recognize the best critical edition or translation into English of primary source materials on Africa published during the preceding two years (copyright date).
The prize includes $300 and a plaque presented at the Annual Meeting Awards Ceremony.
Eligibility
Nominations must be editions of primary source materials dealing with the history, literature, and other aspects of the cultures of Africa. Nominations may be originally in any language translated into English, may be from oral or written traditions, and may be first-time publications or new editions. Works edited by a single individual or jointly edited by more than one author are eligible for consideration. Books, digital resources and databases that meet these criteria are all eligible for consideration. Anthologies with separate contributions by different authors, children’s books, and straightforward texts are not eligible. The minimum length is 10,000 words, excluding the apparatus. Publications must be published during the preceding two years (copyright date) to be eligible.
Nomination
Nominations must be made directly by publishers, who may nominate as many separate titles as they desire. Nomination details must be submitted to the History in Africa managing editor including (1) publisher, (2) contact information, and (3) complete citation. One electronic copy of each nomination must be sent directly to the managing editor at managingedit@historyinafrica.org.
Nominations open January close April 30 of odd years.
2025 Selection Committee
Terri Barnes, HiA editor
Bayo Holsey, HiA editor
Brahim El Guabli, Williams College
Al Kagan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Past Winners
2025
The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdalla’s Voice of Agony (University of Michigan Press, 2024) by Abdilatif Abdalla. Translated by Ken Walibora Waliaula and edited by Annmarie Drury.
2019
Dedan Kimathi on Trial. Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion (Ohio University Press, 2017), edited by Julie MacArthur.
2017
Galawdewos, The Life Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman, edited and translated by Wendy Laura Bulcher and Michael Kleiner (Princeton University Press, 2015)
2013
Karin Barber, Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel: I.B. Thomas’s ‘Life Story of Me, Segilola’ and Other Texts (Brill Publishers, 2012)
2011
Malyn Newitt, Treatise on the Rivers of Cuama (Tratado dos Rios de Cuama) by Antonio da Conceicao (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
2007
Mohamed Kassim and Alessandra Vianello, Servants of the Sharia: The Civil Register of the Qadi’s Court of Brava 1893-1900 2 Vols.: African Sources for African History 6.1-2 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006)
2005
P.F. de Moraes Farias, Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicales and Songhay-Tuareg History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
2003
C. de B. Webb (the late) and J.B. Wright, The James Stuart Archive, Volume 5 (University Of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2001)
2001
John Hunwick (ed. & trans), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa’di’s Ta’rikh al-sudan down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999)
1999
Jean Boyd and Beverly B. Mack (eds.), Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodio, (Michigan State University Press, 1997)
1997
ames H. Vaughan and Anthony H.M. Kirk-Greene (edited & introduced by), The Diary of Hamman Yaji: Chronicle of a West African Muslim Ruler, (Bloomington and Indianapolis Indiana University Press, 1995)
1995
Percy Coriat, Governing the Nuer: Documents in Nuer History and Ethnography, 1922-1931, Douglas H. Johnson (ed.), (Oxford: JASO, 1993)
1993
Paul Hair, Adam Jones, Robin Law (eds. & annotators), Jean Barbot, Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712, ( Hakluyt Society)
