Australian History Awards

This biennial award has been named for A. W. Martin[1] (1926–2002) and is administered jointly by the Australian National University and the Australian Historical Association. The award is to encourage "early career historians" for work relating to Australian History.[2] Submissions for this award are to be work that is being prepared for publication and can be in any form, e.g. a monograph, a series of academic articles, an exhibition or documentary film, or some mix of these.[2]

• 2004: Maria Nugent for Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet (Allen & Unwin)[3]
• 2006: No award made
• 2008: Dr Fred Cahir for Black gold: aboriginal peoples and gold in Victoria 1850-1870
• 2008: Highly Commended: Dr Keir Reeves for Wild onions: a history of Chinese gold-seekers in the Pearl River Delta region of China and the Central Victorian goldfields.
• 2010: No award made [4]
• 2012: Dr Melissa Bellanta, University of Queensland,.[5]
• 2014: Amanda Kaladelfos for Immigration, Violence and Australia Postwar Politics.[6]
• 2016: Ruth Morgan for Australindia: Australia, India and the Ecologies of Empire, 1788–1901[7]
• 2016: Highly Commended: Kirstie Close-Barry for Intersecting Indigenous Histories: Aboriginal and Pacific Islander Connections in Australia’s Northern Territory[7]
• 2017: Benjamin Mountford for A Global History of Australian Gold[7]
• 2017: Highly Commended: Vannessa Hearman for Dealing with the Timorese “Boat People”: Australian and Indonesian Government Responses to the 1995 Arrival in Darwin of the Timorese Asylum Seekers Aboard the Tasi Diak[7]
• 2019: André Brett, Scars in the Country: An Enviro-Economic History of Railways in Australasia, 1850–1914 (joint winner)[8]
• 2019: Iain Johnston-White, research on the impact of the Second World War on Sydney as a port city (joint winner)[8]

The publishers, Blackwell Publishing Asia, have sponsored a prize for the best postgraduate paper at a Regional Conference.

The AHA information states that the "prize will be judged on two criteria: 1) oral presentation of the paper 2) written version of the conference paper. The written version of the conference paper (not a longer version) is to be submitted at the start of the conference. The winner of the prize will be announced at the close of the conference."[9]

• 2007 Winners

Melissa Bellanta (University of Sydney) for Raiders of the Lost Civilisation, or, Adventure-Romances of the Australian Desert, 1890-1907, and

Nell Musgrove (University of Melbourne) for Private Homes, Public Scrutiny: Surveillance of 'the family' in postwar Melbourne

The WK Hancock Prize is run by Australian Historical Association (AHA)[10] with the Department of Modern History, Macquarie University. It was instituted in 1987 in honour of Sir Keith Hancock and his life achievements.

The award is for the first book of history by an Australian scholar and for research using original sources. It is awarded biennially for a first book published in the preceding two years with the award presented at the AHA's National Biennial Conference.

• 2004 Winners

Mary Anne Jebb for Blood, Sweat and Welfare: a History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers (UWA Press, 2002)citation

Warwick Anderson for The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2002)

• • Highly Commended

John Connor for The Australian Frontier Wars: 1788-1838 (University of New South Wales Press)

Brigid Hains for The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn, and the Myth of the Frontier (Melbourne University Press)

• 2006 Winner Tony Roberts for Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900 (UQP, 2005)
  • Highly Commended

Maria Nugent for Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet (Allen & Unwin, 2005)

Sue Taffe for Black and White Together, FCAATSI 1958-1972 (UQP, 2005)

• 2008 Winner:

Robert Kenny for The Lamb enters the Dreaming: Nathaniel Pepper and the Ruptured World (Scribe Publications, 2007)

• • 2008 Highly Commended

Tracey Banivanua-Mar for Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor Trade (University of Hawaii Press, 2007)

• 2010 Winner:

Dr Natasha Campo for From Superwomen to Domestic Goddesses: the rise and fall of Feminism Peter Lang, 2009

• • 2010 Commendation

Dr Clare Corbould for Becoming African Americans" Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939 Harvard University Press, 2009[11]

• 2012 Joint Winners

Frances M Clarke for War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North

Ian Coller for Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831

• • 2012 Commendation

Michael L. Ondaatje for Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America[12]

• 2014 Winner:

Janet Butler for Kitty’s War: The Remarkable Wartime Experiences of Kit McNaughton (University of Queensland Press, 2013)

• 2016 Winner:

Adam Clulow for The Company and The Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia University Press, 2014)[13]

• • 2016 Highly Commended

Ruth Morgan for Running Out? Water in Western Australia (UWA Publishing, 2015)[13]

• 2018 Winner:

Miranda Johnson for The Land Is Our History: Indigeneity, Law, and the Settler State (Oxford University Press)[14]

The Jill Roe Prize is awarded annually to a postgraduate student for the best unpublished article of historical research. It was inaugurated in 2014 in honour of the late Jill Roe.

• 2014: Chris Holdridge for The Pageantry of the Anti-Convict Cause: Colonial Loyalism and Settler Celebrations in Tasmania and Cape Colony (published in History Australia 12, No. 1, April 2015).[15]
• 2015: No prize awarded.[15]
• 2016: James H. Dunk for The Liability of Colonial Madness: Jonathan Burke Hugo in Port Dalrymple, Sydney and Calcutta, 1812.[15]
• 2017: James Findlay for Cinematic Landscapes, Dark Tourism and the Ghosts of Port Arthur.[15]
• 2019: No prize awarded.[16]

The John Barrett Award for Australian Studies is for the best written article published in the Journal of Australian Studies, in the categories: the best article by a scholar (open) and the best article by a scholar (post-graduate).

John Barrett Award: Open Category

• 2014: Nathan Garvey for ‘“Folkalising” Convicts: a “Botany Bay” Ballad and its Cultural Contexts’, JAS, Vol.38 No.1 (March) (2014): 32–51[17]
• 2014 Highly Commended: Mark McKenna for Tokenism or belated recognition? Welcome to Country and the Emergence of Indigenous Protocol in Australia, 1991–2004 JAS, Vol.38 No.4 (December) (2014): 476–89 [18]
• 2013: Lyndall Ryan. 'The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), 1830', JAS, 37:1 (2013): 3-18.[19]
• 2012: Zoe Anderson, 'Borders, babies and ‘good refugees’: Australian representations of ‘illegal’ immigration, 1979', JAS, 36:4 (2012): 499-514.[20]

John Barrett Award: Postgraduate Category

• 2013: Not awarded.
• 2012: Jessica Neath, 'Empty lands: contemporary art approaches to photographing historical trauma in Tasmania', JAS 36:3 (2012): 309-325.[20]

Inaugurated in 2004, this award is named for Kay Daniels (1941–2001),[21] historian and public servant,[22] and recognises her interest in colonial and heritage history.

The biennial award will be administered by The Australian Historical Association.[22]

• 2004: Lucy Frost and Hamish Maxwell-Stuart (eds) for Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives (Melbourne University Press)
• 2006: Trudy Mae Cowley for A Drift of 'Derwent Ducks: Lives of the 200 Female Irish Convicts Transported on the Australasia from Dublin to Hobart in 1849 (Research Tasmania, Hobart, 2005)Review
• 2008: Kirsty Reid for Gender, Crime and Empire: Convicts, Settlers and the State in Early Colonial Australia
• 2010: Dr Hamish Maxwell-Stuart for Closing Hell's Gates: the Death of a Convict Station (Allen & Unwin 2008)
• 2014: Kristyn Harman for Aboriginal Convicts: Australian, Khoisan and Maori Exiles,(UNSW Press 2012) [6]
• 2016: Sue Castrique for Under the Colony’s Eye: Gentlemen and Convicts on Cockatoo Island 1839–1869 (Anchor Books Australia, 2014)[23]
• 2018: Joan Kavanagh and Dianne Snowden for Van Diemen’s Women: A History of Transportation to Tasmania (The History Press Ltd).[14]

The Serle Award was first presented in 2002. The award was established through the generosity of Mrs Jessie Serle for the historian Geoffrey Serle (1922–1998).[24]

The Serle Award is for the best thesis by an "early career researcher" and will be payable on receipt of publisher’s proofs, which must be within twelve months of notification of the award.

The biennial award will be administered by The Australian Historical Association.[24]

• 2005 Winner: Bartolo Ziino for A distant grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War (University of Melbourne, PhD 2003)

Commendation: Catherine Mary Gilchrist for Male Convict Sexuality in the Penal Colonies of Australia 1820-1850 (University of Sydney, PhD 2004)

• 2006 Winner: Jessie Mitchell for Flesh, Dreams and Spirit: Life on Aboriginal Mission Stations 1825-1850 A History of Cross-Cultural Connections (ANU PhD thesis, 2005)
• 2008: Marina Larsson for The Burdens of Sacrifice: War Disability in Australian Families, 1914-1939 (Latrobe University PhD 2006)

Highly Commended

• • • • Olwen Valda Pryke for Australia House: Representing Australia in Great Britain 1901-1939 (University of Sydney PhD 2006)

        Robert Bollard for The Active Chorus: The Mass Strike of 1917 in Eastern Australia (Victoria University PhD 2007)

• 2010: Dr Simon Sleight for The Territories of Youth: Young People and Public Space in Melbourne c1870-1901 (Monash University PhD 2008)

Commendations

• • • • Dr Malcolm Allbrook for Imperial Family: the Prinseps, Empire and Colonial Government in India and Australia (Griffith University PhD 2008)

        Dr Clare McLisky for "Settlers on a Mission" Faith, Power and Subjectivity in the Lives of Danial and Janet Matthews (University of Melbourne PhD 2008)

• 2014: Carolyn Holbrook for The Great War in the Australian Imagination Since 1915.[6]
• 2016: Laura Rademaker for Language and the Mission: Talking and Translating on Groote Eylandt, 1943–1973.[25]
• 2018: Anne Rees for Travelling to Tomorrow: Australian Women in the United States, 1910–1960[26]
  • Highly Commended
  • Steven Anderson for Death of a Spectacle. The Transition from Public to Private Executions in Colonial Australia

• New South Wales Premier's History Awards
• List of Australian literary awards
• List of history awards
• Victorian Community History Awards
• Northern Territory History Awards
• Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History
• Magarey Medal for biography

• The Australian Historical Association
• AHA Prizes and Awards