David Ransel to receive 2019 ASEEES Distinguished Contributions Award

The Distinguished Contributions Award is ASEEES’ highest honor, recognizing individuals with an exemplary record of sustained achievement in the field through scholarship, training, and service to the profession. The 2019 award will be presented to David Ransel, Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, Bloomington.

David Ransel’s wide-ranging and innovative books on the history of family, motherhood, and village life in Russia have been enormously influential, as have his co-edited volumes on empire and everyday life. A generous mentor to young scholars, Ransel directed the University of Indiana’s Russian and East European Institute for fourteen years. He has served two terms on the ASEEES Board of Directors and was President of the Association in 2004. For five years he was the editor-in-chief of Slavic Review before moving on to fulfil the same role for a decade at the American Historical Review, where he championed the fields of women’s and cultural history.

Ransel has served as both a dissertation director and an informal advisor to historians throughout the United States. The conferences he has organized at Indiana have led to the publication of influential scholarly anthologies that have earned wide recognition while advancing the careers of junior colleagues. His prolific work as a book reviewer has brought the contributions of scholars from both the West and Eastern Europe to international attention, building bridges between academic communities. A staunch proponent of academic freedom, Ransel remains active and is currently working on urban and environmental activism in Russia. In David Ransel the Distinguished Contributions Award recognizes a remarkable scholar whose impact on the field of Russian history continues to be profound.

The full citation of his accomplishments can be found here: https://www.aseees.org/programs/aseees-prizes/distinguished-contributions-award/2019-Ransel