Ohio State environmentalist named 2022 Dan David Prize Winner

Bart Elmore

Bart Elmore, associate professor at The Ohio State University Department of History, was among nine early-to-mid-career historians to be awarded the 2022 Award Dan David Prize.

A selection committee made up of distinguished scholars from historical fields evaluated hundreds of nominations. The process was rigorous to select the winners. Each winner will receive $300,000. This award recognizes their achievements and will support future work.

Elmore is an environmental historian who uses everyday products  from sodas to seeds  to demonstrate how large multinational firms have reshaped global ecosystems. He invites us to use the past to help us develop a more sustainable economy.

He is the author of the books Citizen Coca-Cola Capitalism: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism and Seed Money: Monsantos PastAnd Our Food Future.   

Every day I come into the office and think about how the history of multinational firms I study firms like Coca-Cola and Monstanto can be a lens on the larger economy, Elmore said. I look for patterns using this lens. I’m looking for lessons that we can learn from the past and apply them to the future. My goal is to look at how history can help us create more sustainable economies in the future. To me, there’s no better work than this.

Elmore is one of the first cohort of winners of the Dan David Prize, which has been redesigned. The winners specialties cut across a wide array of historical disciplines  from prehistorical bioarchaeology to medieval studies to modern U.S. history  and their projects explore uncharted territory in history.

We live in a world in which the humanities, and particularly history, are devalued and attract less investment, even as it remains clear that only by deepening our knowledge of the past we can gain a better understanding of the present, said Ariel David, board member of prize and son of the founder. We have chosen to concentrate on historical disciplines and support emerging scholars, practitioners, and others, within and outside the academy, at a time when the prize can have a greater impact.

Elmore joins eight other history scholars who are well-respected:

• Mirjam Brusius is a cultural historian at The German Historical Institute.
• Tyrone McKinley Freeman is an Indiana University associate professor and philanthropist.
• Verena Krebs is a historian of medieval Ethiopia at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
• Efthymia Nicka, a bioarcheologist from the Cyprus Institute.
• Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a curator and an art historian.
• Kristina Richardson is an associate professor at Queens College and a historian of medieval Islamic history.
• Natalia Romik, a public history and architect at University College London.
• Kimberly Welch is a Vanderbilt University legal historian. 

The prize was founded in 2001 by Dan David Foundation, a Tel Aviv University philanthropist and entrepreneur. The Dan David Prize Award Ceremony in May 2022 will honor the nine winners.