School of Historical Studies

Nine past and incoming scholars across three IAS Schools—Historical Studies, Mathematics, and Social Science—have received 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships. The scholars were recognized for "both prior career achievement and exceptional promise" in fields ranging from classical archaeology and U.S. history to graph theory and combinatorics.

David Leslie Kennedy, Member (1986–87, 2004) and frequent Visitor in the School of Historical Studies, was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia for his "significant service to archaeology as a researcher and academic." 

Sofía Torallas Tovar, a renowned papyrologist, has joined IAS as long-term Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Historical Studies. A prolific scholar of the ancient Mediterranean, Torallas Tovar's work encompasses Greek and Coptic magical texts, funerary practices and culture, patristic literature, the Coptic Bible, and Philo and Alexandrian Judaism.

Ellie M. Hisama, Edward T. Cone Member in Music Studies in the School of Historical Studies, has been presented with an honorary membership of the American Musicological Society (AMS). Considered to be the Society's highest honor, such memberships are presented to scholars who have made "extraordinary contributions to the Society and to the study and teaching of music."

Drawing on her perspective as a historian of medieval religion and society and her specialization in medieval France, Anne Elisabeth Lester, Visitor in the School of Historical Studies, recounts the devastating fire that engulfed Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in April 2019, and the subsequent efforts to rebuild it, for the American Historical Association's newsmagazine  Perspectives on History.

Rubina Raja, Member (2019) in the School of Historical Studies, has received one of the Carlsberg Foundation’s Research Prizes for 2024. She was honored, in part, for work conducted at the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria.