Laura Rademaker has won the inaugural Taylor and Francis Prize, awarded for the best article published in History Australia each year. Her winning article, ‘Only Cuppa Tea Christians’: Colonisation, Authentic Indigeneity and the Missionary Linguist’ appeared in History Australia, 13:2, pp. 228–42. As the judges wrote, the article ‘provides a nuanced understanding of the changing views of CMS missionaries on the use of English or Aboriginal languages as tools for conversion and the development of true belief. The setting is the Angurugu mission on Groote Eylandt but the well-structured and beautifully written article locates Groote Eylandt in the wider historiography of colonial missionary endeavour. One of its strengths is the way it explores the different ways the Angurugu people and the white missionaries understood the relationship between linguistics and belief and between Indigenous spirituality and evangelical Protestantism.’
The AHA offers sincere congratulations to Laura for this award. We are particularly proud that she was assisted by an AHA-Copyright Agency Bursary, which allowed her to attend the 2013 AHA conference and provided mentorship to develop her conference paper into a journal article.