Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize

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Updated 4 February 2025

Upon submission of their paper proposal for SHOT 2025 in Luxembourg first time presenters can also submit an application for the 2025 Robinson Prize.

Go to the Robinson Prize application form

Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize

Established in 1980 by Dr. Eric Robinson in memory of his wife, the Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize is awarded annually for the best-presented paper by an individual delivering their first paper at the SHOT annual meeting. The prize serves to foster professionalization. Candidates for the award are judged on the quality of the historical research and scholarship of the paper, but the awards committee pays particular attention to the effectiveness of the presentation. The prize consists of a monetary award and a certificate.

Eligibility Requirements/Application Guidelines

All candidates for the Robinson Prize must be first-time presenters at the Society’s Annual Meeting.
Candidates must be graduate students or recipients of their Ph.D. within the past two years.
Welcome to apply are post-docs, visiting assistant professors, independent scholars, and museum and other history professionals. Tenure-track and tenured faculty are not eligible for the prize.
Candidates should mention their wish to be considered for the Robinson Prize in their paper proposal, and in the online submission form for session or conference proposals. In case the paper is part of a full or unconventional session proposal the organizer of the session should indicate this in the proposal and the online submission form.
Upon submission of their paper proposal, those seeking to be candidates for the Robinson Prize must also fill in the online Robinson Prize Application form. By completing and submitting this form candidates confirm their desire to be considered for the award.
- Please note: Effective since 2016, the Robinson Prize Committee will cap the total number of candidates for the prize at 30, administered on a first-come, first-served basis. Others will be added to a waiting list. The SHOT Secretary will keep a list of candidates, if any of the first 30 papers are not accepted for the conference, those on the waiting list will be bumped up accordingly.
Robinson candidates should submit their original, primary source-based research paper to the Chair of their panel, and to the SHOT Secretary no less than one month ahead of the annual meeting. Those who do not submit their papers by this deadline will not be considered for the Robinson Prize.

Judging Process

For those interested in the rubrics that the committee uses in judgement they can find them here: Robinson Judging Rubric.

Honorable mentions

The Robinson Prize Committee has the option of naming not only an official prize winner, but also one or more honorable mentions. Those earning honorable mentions will be noted in the following year’s awards announcement, alongside the citation for the Robinson Prize winner.

Additional Resources

As first-time presenters, Robinson Prize candidates may benefit from:

Paul Edwards “How To Give A Talk: Better Academic Speaking in a Nutshell”
Observations from Jonathan Shewchuk (University of California at Berkeley) about giving an academic talk

Robinson Prize Committee 2024:

Dave Lucsko – Chair
Anna Åberg
Javiera Barandiaran
Amy Bix
Alex Magoun
Allison Marsh
Eden Medina
Alex Meyer
Mara Mills
Jamie Pietruska
Jose Ragas
Sonja Schmid
Ellan Spero

Recipients of the Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize

2024	Constanza Marin (Universidad Catolica Del Norte), “La transformación en la occupación del suelo rural y modo de vida en torno a la agrícultura” Daniel Arauz Nuñez (Western University, London Ontario), “Margaret Mead and Machine Translation”
2023	Roan Parrish (Virginia Tech) “Constructing an Electronic Medical Record”
2022	Salwa Hoque (New York University) “Digital Databases: Colonial Legacies Reinscribed in Technologies”
2021	Hayley Brazier (University of Oregon) “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Public Perception and the Visibility of Seafloor Technologies”
2020	Due to Covid, no Robinson Prize was awarded in 2020.
2019	Jan Henning (University of Toronto, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology),”Opening the Red Box: The Fire Alarm Telegraph and Technologies of Emergency Response”
2018	Hyeok Hweon Kang (Harvard University),”Divine Machine: Korea’s Reception of the Gun”
2017	Thomas Kelsey (King’s College London), “The Peculiar Expense of the British Atom: The Internal Critics of the British Nuclear Power Programme, 1957-83”
2016	Juyoung Lee (Science and Technology Policy Institute, South Korea), “The Practice of Planning in South Korea’s First Comprehensive National Physical Development Plan, 1963-1972”
2015	Sarah McLennan (College of William and Mary), “Computing and the Color Line: Race, Gender, and Opportunity in Early Computing at NASA”
2014	Saara Matala (Aalto University), “The Technopolitics of Cold War Shipbuilding: Nuclear Ice Breakers in Finnish-Soviet Eastern Trade, 1984-1990”
2013	Meghan Crnic (University of Pennsylvania), “Children in the Sun? UV Lamps as Technology of Nature, 1900-1930”
2012	Rachel Rothschild (Yale University), “Détente from the Air: Monitoring Pollution and European Integration in the Cold War”
2011	Whitney E. Laemmli (University of Pennsylvania), “A Case in Pointe: Making Streamlined Bodies and Interchangeable Ballerinas at the New York City Ballet,”
2010	Aditi Raghavan (Northwestern University), “‘The Theodolite Coolie’ and Other British Mapping Devices”
2009	Madhumita Saha (Iowa State University), “The State of India, Postcolonial Agricultural Policy and Pre-Green Revolution Wheat Technology”
2008	Matthew Hersch, “High Fashion: The Women’s Undergarment Industry and the Foundations of American Spaceflight”
2007	Kara Swanson, “Human Milk as Technology and Technologies of Human Milk: Milk Banks in the 20th-Century United States”
2006	Anna Storm (KTH), “Interpretation Processes in Re-used Industrial Areas”
2005	Peter A. Shulman (MIT), “Alaska: Infinite Coal Mine of the Imperial Imagination.”
2004	Jamie Pietruska (MIT), “Every man his own weather clerk: Weather Information Systems, Local Communications Technologies, and a National Weather Service for Agriculture, 1870-1891.”
2003	Matthew Harpster (Texas A&M University), “New rules for old boats: Proportional rules in early-medieval ship design.”
2002	Hyungsub Choi (Johns Hopkins University), “Rationalizing the ‘Guerilla State’: North Korean Factory Management Reform in the 1960s”
2001	Lara Freidenfelds (Harvard University), “Technology and the Production of Gendered and Classed Subjects: Tampons in the Twentieth Century United States”
2000	Devorah Slavin, “‘Housekeeperly Instincts’: 19th Century Women Inventors and the Myth of the Ingenious Woman”
1999	Greg Downey, “Human Labor and Human Geography in the Study of Information Internetworks”
1998	Nina Wormbs, “A New Technology to Save Old Values: The Nordic Direct Broadcasting Satellite”
1997	Thomas Kaiserfeld, “Mining, Manure and the Military: The Science of Saltpeter and Gunpowder”
1996	Killian Anheuser, “Fire-Guilding–Technology of an Ancient Craft”
1995	Barbara L. Allen, “Oil and Water: An Environmental and Cultural History of the Petrochemical Industry in Louisiana”
1994	Greg Clancey, “The Balloon Frame Revisited: Mechanization, Mass Production, and Prefabrication in American Building-Carpentry”
1993	Regina Blaszczyk, “Reign of Robots: The Homer Laughlin China Company and Flexible Mass Production, 1916-1948”
1992	Molly Berger, “Leaving the Light On: The Modern Hotel in America”
1991	Brett Steele, “A Pioneering Engineer: Benjamin Robins and Eighteenth Century Ballistics”
1990	Meg Sondey, “An Initial Investigation of Welded Homes in the United States”
1989	Arwen Mohun, “Women Workers and the Mechanization of Steam Laundries”
1988	Raman Srinivasan, “Technology Sits Cross-Legged: The History of the Jaipur Foot”
1987	Diane Q. Webb, “Two Paths to Building National Science and Technology Capabilities: South Korea and Brazil, 1960-1985”
1986	James H. Capshew, “Engineering a Technology of Behavior: B.F. Skinner’s Kamikaze Pigeons in World War II”
1985	not presented
1984	Susan Smulyan, “The Rise and Fall of the Happiness Boys: Sponsorship, Technology, and Early Radio Programming”
1983	Larry Owens, “Vannevar Bush and the Differential Analyzer: The Text and Academic Context of an Early Computer”
1982	Mona Spangler Phillips, “Geometry in Gothic Design”
1981	Christopher Hamlin, “Recycling as a Goal of Sewage Treatment in 19th Century Britain”
1980	J. Lauritz Larson, “Inventing Technological Systems: A Railway Example”