A UALR history professor has won the prestigious 2014 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ first book prize.

Dr. Susanah Shaw Romney’s book, “New Netherland Connected: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America,” was recently recognized by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.

The honor comes with a $1,000 award and a year’s complimentary membership in the organization.

Through a highly competitive process each year, the organization selects the top books and articles across four categories. Romney’s award was for a first book that deals substantially with the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality.

The award notification letter described Romney’s work as both “penetrating” and “insightful,” noting her skillful handling of Dutch, Native, and African populations to reframe the audience’s understanding of the ways women “created the foundations of empire from the ground up.”

The book was published by University of North Carolina Press, which has earned national and international recognition for the quality of its publications. Romney’s work was published as part of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture series.

Romney also received the 2013 Hendricks Award for the book and the 2013 Jamestown Prize by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.

Her research, which focuses on gender, race, and the fur trade in the 17th-century Dutch colony that later became New York, has taken her from the Huntington Library in California to the Gemeente Archief in Amsterdam and the New York State Archives in Albany.

She completed her undergraduate work in history at University of California-Santa Cruz and received her doctorate from Cornell University.

Romney offers courses in the UALR Department of History on the colonial period, slavery, the frontier, gender, and other topics.