The Society for Military History

SMH 2026 Awards and Prizes

• 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 Londoño, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “The ‘Silly War’ That Wasn’t: Colombian 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, “Beyond Megan McLaughlin’s Legacy: Revisiting Medieval Reactions to Women Warriors”