This prize honors Dr. Kimberly S. Hanger (1962-1999), whose work was tremendously influential within the field of Spanish colonial Louisiana history, particularly her monograph Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (1997). Hanger also authored A Medley of Cultures: Louisiana History at the Cabildo (1996).

The Kimberly S. Hanger Prize is awarded annually for the best undergraduate-level paper presented at a Phi Alpha Theta session of annual LHA conference.