The Australian Historical Association was delighted to announce the winners of its 2022 annual and biennial prizes and awards on Thursday 30 June 2022 at the AHA Conference Dinner. Congratulations to all our shortlists and winners.
The AHA thanks all judges of the annual and biennial awards and prizes. Full citations are available via the links.
Jill Roe Prize
The Jill Roe Prize is awarded annually for the best unpublished article-length work of historical research in any area of historical enquiry, produced by a postgraduate student enrolled for a History degree at an Australian university.
The winner is: Catherine Gay, ‘All the perils of the ocean’: Girls’ emotions on voyages to Australia, 1851-1884.’
Allan Martin Award
The Allan Martin Award is a research fellowship awarded annually to assist early career historians further their research in Australian history.
The winner is: Xu Daozhi, ‘Chinese Perspectives on Indigenous People in Chinese Australian Newspapers, 1894-1937.’
Highly Commended: Nicholas Ferns, ‘Development, Decolonisation and Global Governance: The World Bank’s Impact on Australian Colonial Rule in Papua New Guinea.’
Ann Curthoys Prize
The Ann Curthoys Prize is awarded annually by History Australia for the best unpublished article-length work by an Early Career Researcher in any one or combination of the fields in which Ann has published.
This prize will not be awarded in 2022
Marian Quartly Prize 2021
The Marian Quartly Prize is awarded annually by History Australia for the best article published in the AHA’s journal History Australia in a calendar year.
Magarey Medal for Biography
The Magarey Medal for Biography is awarded biennially to the female person who has published the work judged to be the best biographical writing on an Australian subject. The name of this prize is meant to be a counter to the Magarey Medal for football, the earliest prize established in Australia for a football player (always a bloke!). It is jointly administered by the AHA and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL).
The winner is Bernadette Brennan, Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears (Allen & Unwin, 2021)
Serle Award
The Serle Award is given biennially to the best postgraduate thesis in Australian History awarded during the previous two years.
The winner is Karen Twigg, ‘Along Tyrrell Creek: An environmental history of a Mallee community’
Highly Commended: Matthew Birchall, ‘Company Colonisation and the Settler Revolution, 1820-1840’
Kay Daniels Award
The Kay Daniels award is a biennial award that recognises outstanding original research with a bearing on Australian convict history and heritage including in its international context, published in 2020 or 2021.
The winner is Bill Bell, Crusoe’s Books: Readers in the Empire of Print 1800-1918 (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Commendation: Janet McCalman, Vandemonians (Melbourne University Press, 2020)
W. K. Hancock Prize
The W.K. Hancock Prize is a biennial prize that recognises and encourages an Australian scholar who has published a first book in any field of history in 2018 or 2019.
The winner is Jason Gibson, Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection (SUNY Press, 2020)