About the Foundation

Named after Arnold J.Toynbee, the Toynbee Prize Foundation was chartered in 1987 “to contribute to the development of the social sciences, as defined from a broad historical view of human society and of human and social problems.” The Foundation seeks to promote scholarly engagement with global history through several activities.

Foremost among these is the Toynbee Prize, an award granted every other year to recognize outstanding work in global history. As an affiliated society of the American Historical Association, the Foundation sponsors one session at the Association’s annual meeting. In the years in which the Prize is awarded, the recipient presents a lecture. In alternate years, the Foundation sponsors a session on global history.

The Foundation, based in Massachusetts, is tax exempt under Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Officers:

• President: Dominic Sachsenmaier, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• Vice President: Darrin McMahon, Dartmouth College
• Secretary-Treasurer: Andrew Cohn, WilmerHale
• Executive Director: Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, University of Cambridge

Current Trustees:

• Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University
• David Armitage, Harvard University
• Roland Benedikter, Wroclaw University/Eurac Research Bozen-Bolzano
• Lauren Benton, Yale University
• Erica Charters, University of Oxford
• Andrew H. Cohn, WilmerHale
• David Ekbladh, Tufts University
• Selçuk Esenbel, Boğaziçi University
• Jie-Hyun Lim, Sogang University
• Darrin McMahon, Dartmouth College
• Manoranjan Mohanty, University of Delhi
• Hsiung Ping-chen, University of California, Irvine
• Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago
• Dominic Sachsenmaier, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• Andrew Sartori, New York University
• Akita Shigeru, Osaka University
• Glenda Sluga, University of Sydney
• Peter N. Stearns, George Mason University
• Heidi J. S. Tworek, University of British Columbia

Former Officers and Trustees:

• Charles Bright, University of Michigan
• Nayan Chanda, Yale University
• John Headley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Marshall Goldman, Harvard University
• Raymond Grew, University of Michigan
• Richard M. Hunt, Harvard University
• Akira Iriye, Harvard University
• Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Philip S. Khoury, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Bruce Mazlish, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Barbara Metcalf, University of California, Davis
• Karl E. Meyer, Independent Scholar
• Timothy Nunan, Freie Universität Berlin
• Wolf Schafer, State University of New York at Stony Brook
• Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Strobe Talbott, The Brookings Institution

Editors-at-Large

• Natalie Behrends, Harvard University
• Collin Bernard, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Daniel Chardell, Harvard University
• Mahdi Chowdhury, University of Cambridge
• Martin Crevier, University of Cambridge
• Cindy Ewing, University of Toronto
• Kristie Flannery, University of British Columbia
• Fernando Gomez Herrero, Birkbeck, University of London
• Hayley Keon, University of Hong Kong
• Rustam Khan, University of Hong Kong
• Julia Klimova, University College London
• Tiger Zhifu Li, University of Sydney
• Elizabeth C. Libero, University of Portsmouth
• Joshua Milstein, Freie University of Berlin
• Zaib un Nisa Aziz, Yale University
• James Parker, Northeastern University
• Sean Phillips, University of Oxford
• Joel van de Sande, Columbia University
• Joseph Satish, University of Hyderabad
• Sam de Schutter, Leiden University
• Liat Spiro, College of the Holy Cross
• Nicholas Michael C. Sy, University of the Philippines Diliman
• Christopher Szabla, University of Hong Kong

Along with the support of other foundations and institutions, the Toynbee Foundation sponsors international conferences and panels on important historical questions that arise from, or are freshly addressed through, global history approaches.

This initiative began with an international conference funded by the Culpeper Foundation and held in Bellagio, Italy, in 1991. There, participants sought to conceptualize the new sub-field and to suggest ways to implement it.  The results of the conference were published as Conceptualizing Global History, ed. Bruce Mazlish & Ralph Buultjens (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 1993).

Since that first conference and the publication that grew out of it, the Foundation has sponsored several other international gatherings that reflect the growth of interest in global history. The Foundation is always open to new ideas for future conferences. Interested parties should direct inquiries to toynbeeprize@gmail.org.

• 2018: “The Fight for Global Equality” featuring Darrin M. McMahon (Dartmouth College), Kenneth Pomeranz (University of Chicago), Vanessa Ogle (University of California, Berkeley), Megan Black (London School of Economics and Political Science), and Anne O’Donnell (New York University), at the 132nd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2017: “The 2017 Toynbee Prize Lecture” by Jürgen Osterhammel (University of Konstanz), at the 131st Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2016: “The Origins of Global History: A Reappraisal” featuring Darrin M. McMahon (Dartmouth College), Christopher H. Heaney (University of Texas at Austin), Felipe Fernández-Armesto (University of Notre Dame), and Benjamin Sacks, Princeton University, at the 130th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2015: “The Transformation of Global History, 1963-1975″ (at Princeton University).
• 2015: “From Globalization to Global Warming: A Historiographical Transition” by Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago), at the 129th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2014: “The Intersections of Global and Diplomatic History” featuring Helen McCarthy (Queen Mary University of London), Karen Gram-Skjoldager (Aarhus University), Ariane Leendertz (Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung), and Steffen Rimner (Harvard University), at the 128th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2013: “Agency, Context, Connections: The Challenge of Combining the Multiple Levels of the Global Experience” by Michael P. Adas (Rutgers University), at the 127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2012: “Law and Human Rights in Global History” (in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with papers published in the December 2012 issue of New Global Studies)
• 2012: “Global History and Intellectual Networks” featuring Andrew S. Sartori (New York University), Yan Jin (Fudan University), Cemil Aydin (George Mason University), Kris K. Manjapra (Tufts University), at the 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2011: “Toynbee as Environmental Historian” by John R. McNeill (Georgetown University), at the 125th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
• 2005: “Childhood in Global History” (in Fairfax, Virginia, with papers published in special issue of the Journal of Social History)
• 2004: “Globalization, Philanthropy, and Civil Society” (in Pocantico Hills, New York, with papers published in an eponymous book edited by Soma Hewa and Darwin H. Stapleton)
• 2003:  “New Global History and the City” (in St. Petersburg, Russia, with papers published in a book edited by Elliott Morss)
• 2003: “The Paradox of a Global USA” (in New Haven, Connecticut, with results published in an eponymous volume edited by Nayan Chanda, Bruce Mazlish, and Kenneth Weisbrode)
• 2003: “Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History” (in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with results published in a book edited by Alfred D. Chandler and Bruce Mazlish, with graphs and quantitative data published in book entitled Globalinc, edited by Medard Gabel and Henry Bruner.
• 2003: “Mapping the Multinationals” (in Pocantico Hills, New York, funded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund)
• 1997: “Food in Global History” (in Ann Arbor, Michigan, funded by the University of Michigan and the Toynbee Foundation, with results published in a book of that title edited by Raymond Grew)
• 1995: “Global History and Migrations” (in Hong Kong, funded by the University of Hong Kong, with results published in an eponymous a book edited by Wang Gungwu)
• 1993: “Global Civilization and Local Cultures” (in Darmstadt, Germany, funded by the Technische Hochschule and the Thyssen Foundation, with articles published separately)