Dr Trish Kahle, assistant professor of History, Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) has been awarded Merle Curti Award for Best Book in Social History by the Organisation of American Historians (OAH) for her debut monograph, Energy Citizenship: Coal and Democracy in the American Century, published by Columbia University Press.

Presented at the 2025 OAH conference on American History, the award recognises Dr Kahle’s powerful retelling of American democracy from the coalfields up—centring the lived experiences, struggles, and political power of coal miners in the United States.

“In this book, I tried to treat the political thought and activism of ordinary workers with the same seriousness as is normally accorded to politicians, and I believe that approach shows us something distinctive about the political and energy history of the United States,” said Dr Kahle. “It is an honour to have the committee recognise this book in the tradition of ‘history from below’ that motivates my work as a historian, but even more, it is an honour to the lives and struggles of the people who fill the pages of the book and a testament to their significance in US history.”

The award committee, comprised of four historians, praised the book as a “signal achievement,” noting how Energy Citizenship reframes American political history by showing how miners “effected their own transformation from the margins of the nation’s political community into a uniquely powerful group of energy citizens.”