Tom Cyer wins Leo P. Ribuffo Dissertation Prize

The RAI congratulates, Fellow, Tom Cryer on winning the Leo P. Ribuffo Dissertation Prize

The Society for U.S. Intellectual History is excited to announce the winner of the 2026 Leo P. Ribuffo Prize for Best Dissertation in United States Intellectual History is Thomas Own Cryer, for his dissertation: “‘Walking the Tightrope’: John Hope Franklin and the Dilemmas of African American History in Action.”

Dr Thomas Cryer is a historian of the twentieth-century United States specialising in the intersecting histories of education, ideas, memory, and race. Taken as a whole, his research interrogates how historical narratives have been strategically appropriated, distorted, and mobilised to serve contemporary political agendas. Before arriving in Oxford, ( he completed a BA (Hons) in History and an MPhil in American History at Cambridge and a PhD in American History at University College London’s Institute of the Americas. 

The committee writes: Cryer’s dissertation, offers a theoretically sophisticated, and compellingly written, narrative that allows scholars and students a way into Black intellectualism. (And it is simply an excellent biography of John Hope Franklin!)

To read more about the work submitted, click here.