The Turriano ICOHTEC Prize for books on the history of technology (formerly ICOHTEC Prize for Young Scholars) is sponsored by the Juanelo Turriano Foundation of Madrid, Spain, and consists of 2,500 Euro. Each year the prize-winning book is presented and discussed at a special session of the following ICOHTEC symposium. An additional 500 Euro is available to the winner in support of traveling to the conference to receive the prize.
Call for submissions for 2024
NOTE: The call for submissions is announced here usually in October of each year, with the deadline for submissions set to following mid-January. The winner is announced early May to give a ample time for arranging travel to pick up the prize at our annual symposium, which usually takes place in second half of July.
The Winners
2023 :
Henk-Jan Dekker, for his Cycling Pathways. The Politics and Governance of Dutch Cycling Infrastructure, 1920-2020 (Amsterdam University Press, 2022).
ex aequo
Diana Montaño, for her Electrifying Mexico. Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City (University of Texas Press, 2021).
A honourable mention:
Helen Ahner for her Planetarien. Wunder der Technik – Techniken des Wunderns. (Wallstein Verlag, 2023).
2022 :
Waqar L. Zaidi for his Technological Internationalism and World Order. Aviation, Atomic Energy, and the Search for International Peace, 1920–1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
ex aequo
Sébastien Pautet for his dissertation Le defi chonois des Lumières. Savoirs techniques et économie politique en France au temps des circulations sino-européennes (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles), (PhD Thesis, Université Paris VII , 2021).
2021 : Hyeok Hweon Kang for his dissertation Crafting Knowledge: Artisan, Officer, and the Culture of Making in Chosŏn Korea, 1392–1910 (PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2020).
Two honourable mentions:
Philippe Bruyèrre, La puissance du vent (PUM, Toulouse, 2020)
Martin Meiske, Die Geburt des Geoengineerings (Deutsches Museum,
Wallstein 2021, defended as dissertation in 2020).
2020 : There were two winners of Turriano ICOHTEC Prize in 2020:
Claas Kirchhelle for his book Pyrrhic Progress: The History of Antibiotics in Anglo-American Food Production (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020);
Nicolas Simoncini for his PhD thesis Histoire de la recherche sur les piles à combustible en France des années soixante aux années quarte-vingt (defended at the Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard in December 2018.
A honourable mention:
Lucía Jimena Juárez, Trading Nations: Architecture, Informal Empire, and the Scottish Cast Iron Industry in Argentina (PhD thesis, The University of Edinburgh, March 2018).
2019 : Maria Rikitianskaia for her dissertation European Radiotelegraphy and World War I: A Transnational Perspective, 1912 – 1927 (defended at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano in October 2018).
Three honourable mentions:
Jaroslav Švelch, Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018.)
Pauline Lewis, Wired Ottomans: A Sociotechnical History of the Telegraph and the Modern Ottoman Empire, 1855-1911 (PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, December 2018).
Barbara Berger, Der Gasbehälterals Bautypus. Baukonstruktionsgeschichte des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. In England entwickelt, in Deutschland optimiert, weltweitverbreitet – gezeigt am Beispiel Italiens. PhD thesis, Technische Universität München, May 2018.
2018 : Lino Camprubi, Los ingenieros de Franco. Ciencia, catolicismo y Guerra Fría en el Estado franquista (Barcelona: Crítica, 2017).
Two honorable mentions:
Jonas van der Straeten, Transmitting development. Global networks and the development of local grids in the electrification of East Africa, 1906-1970. PhD thesis, Darmstadt 2017.
David López López and Marta Domènech Rodríguez, Tile vaults. Structural analysis and experimentation. 2nd Gustavino Biennal. Disputació de Barcelona 2017.
2017 : Brice Cossart, Les artilleurs et la Monarchie Catholique: Fondements technologiques et scientifiques d’un empire transocéanique (The Gunners and the Catholic Monarch War: Technology and Science in the Shaping of a Transoceanic Empire), defended at the European University Institute in Florence in 2016 .
2016 : Vanessa Meikle Schulman, Work sights: The Visual Culture of Industry in Nineteenth-Century America, published by the University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.
2015 : Karena Kalmbach, Meanings of a Disaster: The Contested ‘Truth’ about Chernobyl. British and French Chernobyl Debates and the Transnationality of Arguments and Actors, a dissertation completed in September 2014 at the European University Institute, Florence, Department of History and Civilization.
2014 : Dora Vargha, Iron Curtain, Iron Lungs: Governing Polio in Cold War Hungary 1952-1963, a dissertation completed at Rutgers University in 2013, under the direction of Paul Hanebrink.
2013 : Laura Ann Twagira, Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali), dissertation defended at Rutgers University.
2012 : Hermione Giffard, The development and production of turbojet aero-engines in Britain, Germany and the United States, 1936-1945, dissertation defended at Imperial College, University of London, in 2011 (not yet published)
2011: Christopher Neumaier, Dieselautos in Deutschland und den USA, Zum Verhältnis von Technologie, Konsum und Politik, 1949 –2005 (Stuttgart, 2010).
2010 : Anne-Katrine Ebert, Ein Ding der Nation? Das Fahrrad in Deutschland und den Niederlanden, 1880-1940: Eine vergleichende Konsumgeschichte, dissertation defended at the University of Bielefeld, Germany.
2009 : Anna Storm, Hope and Rust: Reinterpreting the Industrial Place in the Late 20th Century (Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology, 2008).