Members of the Fellowship Committee this year were Haven Hawley, Chair, and Johanna Drucker and Miriam Intrator as members. We are pleased to provide information about the winner of the 2024 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History. We received fifteen applications, and competition was again extremely strong.

The American Printing History Association has awarded the 2024 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History to Nilkantha Pal. Pal’s project is titled “Children’s Magazines in Colonial Bengal: Childhood, Child Readers, and the Bengali Print Market, ca. 1880–1950.” His research project combines a detailed study of the printing technologies of children’s literature with an examination of how such works constructed the concept of childhood. 

In his application, Pal described his scholarship as “investigating the printing sphere for Bengali children, the aesthetic or material aspects of their reading materials, particularly children’s magazines, their production and circulation processes”.  He will be extending his research on this topic through archival research at the British Library, with the support of the award.

Nilkantha Pal is a PhD Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali and holds an M.A. in History from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, one of the leading universities in India.

Congratulations to Nilkantha Pal on this award. 

On behalf of the Fellowship Committee, I would like to thank the entire group of applicants for the 2024 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History and wish each of you well in your printing history work. We received a number of very strong applications, and we regret that our Association has only one award to provide. We are grateful for the opportunity to learn about the research of many wonderful scholars.