University of Melbourne Associate Professor Matthew Champion has been awarded the largest history prize in the world – the 2026 Dan David Prize.
Associate Professor Champion (pictured) was recognised for his research into how medieval and early modern societies experienced, perceived and structured time.
His research revealed how communities between the 13th and 17th Centuries coordinated everyday life through sound, ritual, labour, religion and material culture, long before the standardisation of clock time.
“I am honoured to have received this recognition alongside a group of extraordinary scholars from across the globe,” Assoc Prof Champion said.
“I hope to use the prize to help us deepen our understanding of how time shapes history, and how our histories shape our present times.”
Drawing together perspectives from history, anthropology, art history, musicology and sound studies, his work challenged longstanding assumptions that pre-modern societies experienced time in static or uniform ways.
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Jennifer Balint, congratulated Assoc Prof Champion on winning the Dan David Prize – the highest possible recognition for scholars studying the human past.
“Matthew’s distinctive research challenges us to think differently about time, something that shapes all of our lives in ways we don’t often consider,” Prof Balint said.
“His research demonstrates the deep value of humanities scholarship in helping us better understand structure and meaning in our society and the ways people make sense of their world.”
Prof Champion’s first book, The Fullness of Time, won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize in 2018. It explored how people in the 15th Century ordered time by the rhythms of human action, from cathedral music and calendars to work habits and devotional practices.
He has been a Chief Investigator on major Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects including The Sounds of Timeand Albrecht Dürer’s Material World, and is currently leading The History of the Hourglass with researchers at the University of Manchester and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
Prof Champion is the first University of Melbourne academic to be awarded the Dan David Prize.
