Business History Conference 2025 Annual Meeting Award Winners

Prize recipients announced in Atlanta, GA, during the BHC annual meeting

Apr 14, 2025

ATLANTA, March 2025 — The Business History Conference is proud to announce the recipients of its 2025 prizes, awarded in recognition of outstanding scholarship in the field of business history.

Williamson Prize (for mid-career excellence)

• Justene Hill Edwards (Co-Winner)

• Christina Lubinski (Co-Winner)

Gomory Prize (recognizes historical work on the effects of business enterprises on the economic conditions of the countries in which they operate)

• Elizabeth O’Brien Ingelson, Made in China. When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade (Harvard University Press) – Winner

• Sean H. Vanatta, Plastic Capitalism. Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control (Yale University Press) – Honourable Mention

Hagley Prize (for best book in business history)

• Simone Müller, The Toxic Ship. The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade (University of Washington Press) – Co-Winner

• Görkem Akgöz, The Shadow of War and Empire. Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey (Brill) – Co-Winner

Finalists (*winners)

*Görkem Akgöz, In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialization, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey (Brill, 2024)

Jennifer Black, Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

Andrew Denning, Automotive Empire: How Roads and Cars Fueled European Colonialism in Africa (Cornell University Press, 2024).

Justine Hill Edwards, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank (Norton, 2024).

Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson, Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade (Harvard University Press, 2024)

Trish Kahle, Energy Citizenship: Coal and Democracy in the American Century (Columbia University Press, 2024).

*Simone Müller, The Toxic Ship: The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade (University of Washington Press, 2023).

Michael O’Sullivan, No Birds of Passage: A History of Gujarati Muslim Business Communities (Harvard University Press, 2023).

Seth Rockman, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

Sean Vanetta, Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial (Yale University Press, 2024)

Wilkins Prize (for the best article published annually in Enterprise & Society pertaining to international and comparative business history)

• Adam Hefetz – Winner

“Capturing Regulation Under Imperial Rule: The Regulation of Palestine’s Banking Sector”

• Yen Nie – Honourable Mention

“Crafting a Postcolonial (Inter)national Identity: Malaysian Pewter Company Royal Selangor’s Branding Strategies (1970–1992)”

Scranton Prize (for best article published in Enterprise & Society in the previous year)

• Sabine Pitteloud – Winner

“Have Faith in Business: Nestlé, Religious Shareholders, and the Politicization of the Church in the Long 1970s”

• Julia Sarreal – Honourable Mention

“From South America to the United States: Guayakí and the Transformation of Yerba Mate”

Trescott Prize (to the best paper at the intersection of business history and the history of technology presented at the annual meeting of the Business History Conference)

• Cody Patton – Winner