William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology
The William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology honors the best book published annually in Europeanist anthropology as determined by a panel of senior anthropologists, chaired by the Society’s President-elect.
Nominations are now open for the 2026 prize!
Eligible volumes must be available in English, whether published in the US or abroad. They must have been published in the calendar year before the prize adjudication. Multi-author volumes are eligible as well, but edited collections of essays are not.
The deadline for submission of nominations is May 1, 2026.
Books submitted for the 2026 prize consideration must have been published in 2025 (as indicated on the copyright page); books translated into English must have appeared in English in 2025 though they may have been published in another language earlier.
The prize recipient(s) is/are named shortly before the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, with suitable publicity provided for the winning entry at the annual meeting and on the SAE website.
To be considered for the Douglass Prize a hard copy of the eligible volume (no manuscripts, photocopies or electronic files will be accepted) must be sent to each of the three judges on the selection panel (for a total of three submitted copies). For instructions on where to send the books please contact the current SAE President-elect, Professor Neringa Klumbytė, by email at klumbyn@miamioh.edu.
Each nomination must also include a submission fee of $50. You can pay online at the AAA website by clicking this link. You can also pay by check. The check should be made out to AAA/SAE and clearly marked as a submission fee. Please send checks to the attention of:
Christian Martinez, Controller
American Anthropological Association
2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301
Arlington, VA 22201-3386
703.528.1902, ext 1160 – fax: 703.528.3546
Website: www.americananthro.org
cmartinez@americananthro.org
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ANNOUNCING THE DOUGLASS BOOK PRIZE WINNERS FOR 2025
Congratulations to Bruce O’Neill, winner of the 2025 Douglass Book Prize for his book, Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest (University of Pennsylvania Press), as well as to Agnieszka Pasieka, who receives an Honorable Mention for Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activism in Contemporary Europe (Princeton University Press). Eleven books were nominated for the prize, with a number of very strong contenders. On behalf of SAE, Neringa Klumbytė, SAE President-Elect and the Chair of the 2025 Douglass Book Prize Committee, profusely thanks the other members of the Douglass Book Prize Judging Committee: Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan) and Yuson Jung (Wayne State University).
The Douglass Book Prize Committee offered its commendations to the winners:
Douglass Book Prize winner: Bruce O’Neill Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest
Bruce O’Neill’s book is an outstanding original contribution to understanding urban transformations of contemporary Europe. It examines the materialities and symbolic meanings of the underground in Bucharest, Romania’s capital city. In Bucharest—as in many other European cities—where space has become crowded, expensive, and unaffordable, O’Neill traces how people move into basements to live, descend into pedestrian tunnels to work, and shop in underground malls. By engaging issues of housing affordability, infrastructural planning, and modernization, Underground illuminates the contradictions of the urban development: progress and comfort coexist with inequality and precariousness. O’Neill situates urban dreams and degradations within an Eastern European context, while speaking powerfully to broader urban debates. The Committee was impressed by the innovative conceptual framing, elegant structure, excellent writing, and empirical richness of the book. Underground stands out as a landmark contribution not only to European studies but also to global conversations on urbanity, modernity, and inequality.
Honorable mention: Agnieszka Pasieka Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activism in Contemporary Europe
The resurgence of far-right militancy has emerged as a critical concern in Europe and transnationally. In Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activism in Contemporary Europe, Agnieszka Pasieka presents a richly detailed ethnographic account of youth activism in Italy, Poland, and Hungary. Pasieka highlights the role of camaraderie, moral commitments, and everyday practices in shaping how far-right ideas are lived and experienced by the youth. She raises hard questions about the limits of liberalism and appeals of fascism locally and transnationally. The book provides rare and intimate portraits of far-right groups, and an analysis of bonding forged through affective and social engagements. Living Right is distinguished by its empirical depth, theoretical sophistication, and methodological rigor. It is also an original account of immersive fieldwork that employs ethnographic reflexivity to reflect upon the ethical challenges of such research. Living Right not only interrogates urgent political questions of the present in Europe and beyond, but also advances critical debates in anthropology concerning ethnographic ethics, methodology, and the analysis of contemporary radicalisms.
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PREVIOUS YEARS’ AWARDEES
The 2024 William A. Douglass Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology was awarded to Elizabeth Anne Davis for her book, Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Duke University Press). Apostolos Andrikopoulos received Honorable Mention for his book Argonauts of Western Africa: Unauthorized Migration and Kinship (University of Chicago Press). Dorothy Zinn (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) chaired the 2024 William A. Douglass Prize Committee, which also included Adriana Petryna (U. Pennsylvania) and Charles Stewart (Emeritus, UCL). Hearty congratulations to the awardees!
The 2023 William A. Douglass Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology was awarded ex-aequo to two books: to Traces of Violence: Writings on the Disaster in Paris, France by Robert Desjarlais and Khalil Habrih (University of California Press) and Ruderal City: Ecologies of Migration, Race, and Urban Nature in Berlin by Bettina Stoetzer (Duke University Press). SAE president-elect Dorothy Zinn (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) chaired the 2023 William A. Douglass Prize Committee, which included Dieter Haller (Bochum) and Jaro Stacul (Memorial U). Hearty congratulations to the awardees!
The 2022 William A. Douglass Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology was awarded jointly to two authors: to Siv B. Lie for Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and to Filippo Bonini Baraldi for Roma Music and Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2021). SAE president-elect Jane Cowan (Sussex) chaired the 2022 William A. Douglass Prize Committee, which included Stef Jansen (Sarajevo) and Andrea Muehlebach (Bremen). The committee warmly congratulates the awardees.
