The AHA Executive Committee is delighted to announce the shortlists for the 2024 AHA prizes and awards. The prizes portfolio administrators would like to thank the various judging panels who have been hard at work in recent months. The winners of each prize will be announced at the AHA conference dinner on Thursday 4 July 2024 in Adelaide. (The following shortlists are in alphabetical order of surname.)
Allan Martin Award
Research fellowship for early-career historians
Niro Kandasamy – Managing Conflicts, Making the Indian Ocean World: Examining Australian Responses to Conflicts in the Indian Ocean during the Twentieth Century
Ebony Nilsson – Russians Among Us: A Cultural History of the Petrov Affair
Jessica Urwin – Following the ‘Yellowcake Road’: Tracing the imperial roots and routes of Australian uranium, 1940s-1960s
General History Thesis Prize
Best postgraduate thesis in History (excluding Australian history)
Paige Donaghy – Uncertain Knowledge: False Conceptions and Molas in European Medicine, 1500–1800
Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan – Venereal Diseases and Bodily Excesses: A Social History of Contagions in the Madras Presidency (c. 1780 to 1900)
Henry-James Meiring – Reading Morals: Charles Darwin and the Descent of Morality
Jill Roe Prize
Best unpublished article-length work of historical research by a postgraduate student
Ruby Ekkel – ‘Better the devil you know: care and conservation at Beaumaris Zoo, 1908-1921′
Narissa Phelps – ‘The Gates of the Inclosure [sic] have been left open, and the Paling torn down’: Australia’s own Enclosure Movement
Zoe Smith – ‘Domestic tyranny’ and ‘petty despotism’: Historicising coercive control in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Australia
Kay Daniels Award
Original research with a bearing on Australian convict history and heritage
Clare Anderson – Convicts: A Global History
Anna Johnston – The Antipodean Laboratory: Making Colonial Knowledge, 1770-1870
Magarey Medal for Biography
Best biographical writing on an Australian subject by a woman author
Meg Foster – Boundary Crossers: The Hidden History of Australia’s Other Bushrangers
Kate Fullagar – Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled
Jillian Graham – Inner Song: A Biography of Margaret Sutherland
Brigitta Olubas – Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life
Ann-Marie Priest – My Tongue Is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood
Serle Award
Best postgraduate thesis in Australian history
Rosa Campbell – A Global History of Australian Women’s Liberation, 1968-1990
Emily Gallagher – The Childhood Imagination in Australia, 1890 to 1940
Matthew Ryan – ‘Our land abounds in nature’s gifts’: Commodity frontiers, Australian capitalism, and socioecological crisis
Jessica Urwin – Chain Reactions: Nuclear Colonialism in South Australia
W.K. Hancock Prize
First scholarly book in any field of history
Aditya Balasubramanian – Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India
Isobelle Barrett-Meyering – Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution
Jarrod Hore – Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism
Walter Marsh – Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire
Alecia Simmonds – Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law
The AHA warmly congratulates all of these wonderful historians on their outstanding achievements, which we look forward to celebrating in July. We also congratulate and thank all those who applied for this year’s prizes and recognise the time and care they have invested in their work.