The Society for Military History

Welcome to the Society for Military History

Established in 1933 as the American Military History Foundation, renamed in 1939 the American Military Institute, and renamed again in 1990 the Society for Military History, the Society is devoted to stimulating and advancing the study of military history. Its membership (today more than 3200) has included many of the world's most prominent scholars, soldiers, and citizens interested in military history.

Celebrating our 2026 Award Winners

The Society recognizes academic excellence and service with a number of awards and prizes each year, with this year's winners listed here. For a description of each award and lists of past winners, click on the name of each award below.

THE SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON PRIZE

• Andrew Wiest, University of Southern Mississippi

• John Hall, University of Wisconsin

• Distinguished: John M. Kinder, World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict in the Modern Age (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
• Distinguished: Andrew Preston, Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security (Harvard University Press, 2025)
• First Book: Lauren Duval, The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture & University of North Carolina Press, 2025)
• Biography and Memoirs: Hanna Diamond, Josephine Baker’s Secret War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025)
• Edited/Reference: Ina Ona Johnson & Robert Clemm, A Violent Peace: A Global Military History of the Interwar Period (University Press of Kansas, 2025)

• Travis Salley, “Sex and Danger, Airborne Ranger: A Historical Analysis of G.I. Songs, Jody Calls and Marching Cadences”
• Honorable Mention: Boyd Raumcharoen, “Deteriorating Relations: Weatherable Materials, Tropical Decay, and American Power, 1942–1970s”

• Nick Kapur, "The Invention of the Kamikaze: Dissent and Resistance in the Japanese Military," Journal of Military History (October 2025): 924-52.
• Geert van der Tier and Tristan Mostert, "'Lest it be conquered by the wind': The Early Evolution of VOC Fortifications on Dutch Formosa (c. 1620-1650)," Journal of Military History (April 2025): 281-306.
• Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi and Alvaro Tacchini, “Indian Troops in the Liberation of Italy: Memory and Memorialization in the Upper Tiber Valley,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies Vol. 30, No. 4 (online 2025), 1-19.
• Ilya Berkovich, “The Adaptation of the Habsburg Army Oath for Jewish Soldiers: The Precedent of the Prague Infantry Volunteer David Koschler (1789),” Judaica Bohemiae 60 (2025), 25-44.

• Molly Bompane, USAHEC, “This We’ll Defend: Celebrating 250 Years of Army History,” Museum Exhibit at Carlisle Barracks, PA.
• Chris Magra, Center for the Study of Tennesseans at War, Oral History Archive.

• Srijita C. Pal, University of Southern California, “The War within the War: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic on the Western Front.”
• Runner-Up: Jules Anderson, Duke University, “Waging a Maritime Vernichtungskrieg: A Sociocultural History of Submarine Warfare in Nazi Germany, 1935-1945.”
• Runner-Up: Dongil Shin, University of Maryland-College Park, “Recognition through Violence: Trans-Imperial Counterinsurgency and Militarized Decolonization in Korea.”

• Lauren Cain, University of Maryland-College Park, “’A souvenir from France’: How the US Military Mitigated War Bride Marriage, 1918-1923”
• Eleanor Lenoe-Williams, Rutgers University (Grad Talks roundtable about dissertation topics), Militarized Boyhood: Japanese Child Army Followers in the Allied Occupation and the Korean War
• Marlon Londono, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “The ‘Silly War’ That Wasn’t: Columbian Military History and the Untold Story of the Panama Canal”
• Srijita C. Pal, University of Southern California, “The War within the War: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic on the Western Front of the First World War”
• Brian Washam, University of Southern Mississippi, “The Battle over National Reconciliation: Gerald Ford’s Efforts to Heal the Wounds of the Nation through Clemency after the Vietnam War."
• Ariel Wilks, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “A Colonial Tradition: Discourse of Privateering Before and During the American Revolution”

• Piotr Bruzda, Adam Mickiewicz University, “The Viêt Công’s Total War: Communist Mass Mobilization in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War”

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