Nicola Di Cosmo Awarded Onon Prize for Scholarship on the Mongolian and Inner Asian Region
Nicola Di Cosmo, Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies in the School of Historical Studies, has been named the 2026 recipient of the Onon Prize. The prize, awarded by the University of Cambridge’s Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU), is intended to honor “those who have made a substantial contribution to scholarship on the Mongolian and Inner Asian region.”
Di Cosmo, who joined the Institute faculty in 2003, is an expert in the history of the relations between China and Inner Asia from prehistory to the modern period. His recent books include Venice and the Mongols: The Eurasian Exchange That Transformed the Medieval World, a translation of Venezia e i Mongoli (Rome, 2002), coauthored with Lorenzo Pubblici. The English translation was published by Princeton University Press this March. The book has been described as a “masterful” elucidation of “the interconnectedness of medieval Eurasia through the exploration of the commercial and diplomatic relationships between two medieval states.”
Di Cosmo’s recent work also includes the introduction of a new tool known as the “dahliagram,” which enables researchers to analyze and visualize a wide array of quantitative and qualitative knowledge from diverse disciplinary sources and epistemological backgrounds. This resulted from a collaborative research project including archaeologists, historians, climate scientists, paleoscientists, and others, conducted at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF: Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) at Bielefeld University in Germany.
Previous recipients of the Onon Prize include two other IAS scholars: Manduhai Buyandelger, Member (2014–15) in the School of Social Science, who received the prize in 2022, and Christopher Pratt Atwood, Member (2007) in the School of Historical Studies, who was the 2020 awardee.
Di Cosmo will visit Cambridge to deliver a special Onon Prize Series lecture at the forthcoming Cambridge Mongolia Forum, which marks the 40th anniversary of MIASU, in September 2026.
