Historian Ada Ferrer to chair 2025 Cundill History Prize jury
McGill University administers the Cundill History Prize, a global prize for English-language writing
Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer will chair the jury for the 2025 Cundill History Prize.
The $75,000 US (approx. $107,381 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best historical nonfiction work of the year, which exhibits literary excellence and broad appeal.
It is administered by McGill University in Montreal and is open to books about any historical period or subject, by authors of all nationalities from across the world.
Ferrer, born in Cuba and based in the U.S., was previously nominated for the Cundill History Prize in 2022, for her book Cuba: An American History. It won the Pulitzer Prize in that same year.
Her other books include Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898, which won the Berkshire Book Prize, and Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
She is a professor at Princeton University and previously taught at New York University.
"Historians know that history is everywhere," Ferrer said in a press statement. "The Cundill History Prize does an extraordinary service by shining a spotlight on the best of history — compellingly written, deeply researched, and urgently relevant for understanding the world and its present. I look forward to working with my fellow jurors, to reading great history, and to bringing to it the attention it so richly deserves."
The rest of the prize jury will be announced in April. The shortlist and finalists will be revealed in September and the winner will be crowned in late October. The submission period is until February 28.
The 2024 winner was American author Kathleen DuVal for Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.
