Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, lead archaeologist on the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) Archaeology Project, has won the 2025 Dan David Prize, widely regarded as the world’s largest history award.
A pioneering Nigerian archaeologist and research fellow at the British Museum, Babalola joins eight other international recipients of the $300,000 prize. The award celebrates early- to mid-career scholars whose groundbreaking research is reshaping how we understand the human past.
Dr. Babalola’s pioneering research brings to light the scientific and technological achievements of precolonial West Africa. Focusing on classical Ile-Ife in present-day Nigeria, he applies material science to uncover the complexity of indigenous glass production. Through this work, he reveals that West African societies developed advanced technologies centuries before European contact. In doing so, he directly challenges Eurocentric narratives and reshapes the global understanding of Africa’s role in technological history.
At the Igbo Olokun site near Ile-Ife, Babalola’s team uncovered over 12,000 glass beads and production remnants from the 11th to 15th centuries AD. Made with a rare high lime, high alumina (HLHA) formula unique to the region, these artifacts reveal a distinct Yoruba scientific and artistic tradition rooted in local materials like feldspar and snail shells.
Beyond excavation, Babalola leads the Archaeology of Glass Project and is curating a mobile exhibition, Science, Technology, and Invention in the Empire of Ile-Ife, set to tour cities across southwest Nigeria. His earlier work documenting Nigeria’s bead-making heritage highlights his broader commitment to conservation and public engagement.
Earlier this year, the Archaeological Institute of America awarded him the 2025 Conservation and Heritage Management Award. He is also a recipient of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum’s Field Discovery Award and has held fellowships at Harvard, Cambridge, UCL-Doha, and the Cyprus Institute.
“These winners are not only uncovering the past but reshaping how we understand it,” said Ariel David, whose father, Dan David, established the prize in 2001. “Through groundbreaking discoveries and novel approaches, they continually challenge us to think deeper about history and how we illuminate it.”
Among the 2025 Dan David Prize winners are Mackenzie Cooley of Hamilton College, Bar Kribus of Tel Aviv University, Hannah Marcus of Harvard University, Beth Lew–Williams of Princeton University, and Caroline Sturdy Colls of the University of Huddersfield. They are joined by filmmaker Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, Romanian historian Alina Șerban, and philosopher Dmitri Levitin, who holds appointments at both Oxford and Utrecht. Together, this diverse group of scholars and creators embodies a new wave of historical inquiry, one that combines bold perspectives with innovative methodologies.
