A NIGERIAN research archaeologist with the British Museum, Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, has won the 2025 Dan David Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious and financially significant awards in the historical disciplines.
He was honoured with a $300,000 cash prize at a ceremony held in Italy on May 28, according to Professor Saheed Aderinto, historian and academic, who won the same award in 2023.
Aderinto, professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies, Florida International University, who was at the ceremony in Italy, wrote on the news and the event on his Facebook page:
Another Nigerian Dan David Prize Winner is Here!
Congratulations to Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, a research archaeologist at The British Museum in the UK, on winning the 2025 Dan David Prize, the world’s largest financial reward for excellence in the historical discipline. It’s a $300,000 cash Prize. I won the Dan David Prize in 2023, and was happy to witness another truly exceptional scholar from Nigeria achieve this incredible excellence at the awards ceremony in Italy on May 28.
It’s a $300,000 cash Prize. I won the Dan David Prize in 2023, and was happy to witness another truly exceptional scholar from Nigeria achieve this incredible excellence at the awards ceremony in Italy on May 28.
The Dan David Prize is not a grant, it’s a Prize. It’s a reward for achieving undeniable success through field-defining research. The Prize money helps the winners to continue to break new boundaries. Dr. Babalola will receive $300,000 into his bank account. If you see him, bill him — he has real money!
So, what exactly did Dr. Babalola do to win the Dan David Prize? A simple explanation is that he proved that glass bead production is indigenous to Africa. This is a novel and Nobel discovery because for decades, scholars argued that Africa didn’t have the capacity to produce glass beads. Because material culture is a gateway to the history of human civilisation, his discovery has major implication for Africa’s ancient history.
For two decades, Dr. Babalola did numerous archaeological excavations at Ile-Ife, worked in world-class laboratories, and held prestigious fellowships at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. His hard labour and mind-blowing discoveries further position Ile-Ife in Yoruba history and open new vistas for understanding ancient African civilisation.
Combining hardcore scientific tools with ethnographic, archaeological, and historical methodologies, Dr. Babalola explicates the cardinal place of glass beads in Ile-Ife and Yoruba culture, placing the history of a material object at the centre of a wide range of experiences that transcend class, gender, power, religion, and authority.
Dr. Babalola is more than a genius and a fellow scholar—he’s also one of my best friends. We became friends in 1998 as undergraduates at the University of Ibadan. We both moved to the US and raised families in Texas while completing our PhDs. He was at Rice University in Houston, while I was at the University of Texas at Austin.
That’s not all. We share the same perspectives on rigor, audacity, and tenacity. We were both denied critical support at the most important periods of our careers by people who mattered most, then. But what was supposed to kill us made us stronger. We scaled professional hurdles with dignity. And against all odds, we excelled, pulling through an unfathomable work ethic that produced unbelievable outcomes, which marvelled even the king of the doubting Thomases.
During the awards ceremony on May 28 in Italy, we reproduced our 1999 photo, taken on the campus of the University of Ibadan. It’s 26 years apart, but it feels like this morning!
Congrats Baatunde. Ibu owo Oko Morenikeji!
