Mike Smith Student Prize for History of Australian Science or Australian Environmental History

Status

The call for submission is now closed. See below for the winning essays.

The next round of the Mike Smith Student Prize will be in 2023–24, with entries opening late in 2023.

Deadline

9 am AEDT Monday 17 January 2022.

Criteria

The prize will be awarded for an essay based on original unpublished research undertaken whilst enrolled as a student (postgraduate or undergraduate) at any tertiary educational institution in the world.

The essay should be 4000–8000 words in length (exclusive of endnotes). Essays must be written in English and fully documented following the style specified for the Australian Academy of Science’s journal, Historical Records of Australian Science.

Essays may deal with any aspect of the history of Australian science (including medicine and technology) or Australian environmental history. ‘Australia’ can include essays that focus on the Australian region, broadly defined, including Oceania. Essays that compare issues and subjects associated with Australia with those of other places also are welcomed.

The winning entry, if it is in a suitable subject area, may be considered for publication in Historical Records of Australian Science. Upon entering the competition, applicants agree that Historical Records of Australian Science is permitted the first right of refusal for the winning entry if it is deemed eligible for publication. Historical Records of Australian Science published a virtual issue in 2019 showcasing six previous essays awarded the Mike Smith Prize.

Award

Cash prize of $3,000. Minor prizes may be awarded at the panel’s discretion.

Application process

Applications are to be submitted to nc@science.org.au by 9am AEDT Monday 17 January 2022. Materials to be submitted (in the following order):

Covering email, containing:

• Full name
  • Contact details (postal and e-mail addresses and telephone number)
  • Title of submission
  • University course (and year of course if undergraduate)
  • Student number
• Essay in PDF format
• PDF letter or attached e-mail from applicant’s academic supervisor attesting that the essay meets the eligibility criterion set out above.

The judging panel will have three members:

• Chair (or nominee), National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science (Chair of panel)
• Editor (or nominee), Historical Records of Australian Science
• Senior Curator (or nominee), National Museum of Australia

The winner will be contacted by or e-mail and the prize will be presented and announced on the websites of the National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science in mid-2022.

Judges’ decisions are final. The judges retain the right to split the prize, or not to award a prize. The Academy and the National Museum of Australia are not able to enter into discussion or correspondence regarding the reasons why a submission is or is not successful. Upon entering the competition, applicants agree that Historical Records of Australian Science is permitted the first right of refusal for the winning entry if it is deemed eligible for publication.

For further information contact:

National Committees Office
nc@science.org.au
Phone: 02 6201 9400

Past winners

• 2021–2022 first prizes:
  • Jessica Urwin—‘No time to waste’: Aboriginal resistance to Australia’s nuclear waste, 1998–2004
  • Margaret Williams—Biopolitics and the Bacillus: Sinophobia in an Epidemic of Bubonic Plague in Sydney, 1900–10.
• 2019–2020 first prize: Karen Twigg of La Trobe University—The Green Years: the role of abundant water in shaping rural women’s experience in the 1950s
• 2017 first prize: Martin Bush of Swinburne University of Technology and Museum Victoria—The Proctor-Parkes Incident: Politics, Protestants and Popular Astronomy in Australia in 1880
• 2017 highly commended: Jennifer Bowen of the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies—Riding the Waves: Professor T. H. Laby as Imperial Scientist and Radio Visionary
• 2013 winning entry: Christina Dyson of the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning—Living fossils and mouth-watering stones: manipulating history in the post-WWII natural Australian plant garden
• 2013 joint runner up: Alessandro Antonello from the Australian National University—Repelling the assault on the unknown: Australia and the International Geophysical Year in Antarctica
• 2013 joint runner up: Sonya Duus from the Australian National University—Contesting coal: echoes through time
• 2011 first prize: Christian O'Brien of the Australian National University's School of History—A brief history of the monsoon (PDF 648 KB)
• 2011 second prize: Sonya Duus of the Australian National University's Fenner School of Environment and Society—Buried sunshine, sacrifical lands and industrial slaves: an environmental history of coal in Australia
• 2011 highly commended: Cameron Muir of the Australian National University with his essay—Wheat for a white world: social and ecological relationships on the agricultural frontier in the early 20th century
• 2010 winning entry: Luke Keogh of the University of Queensland—Duboisia Pituri—A Natural History
• 2009 joint winning entry: Jodi Frawley of the University of Sydney—Trans/Nationalising wattle from the Sydney Botanic Gardens
• 2009 joint winning entry: Benedict Taylor from the University of New South Wales—It is curious how the convict loves a pet: animals in Australian prisons and penal discourse
• 2007 winning entry: Coral Dow—A ‘Sportsman’s Paradise’: The Effects of Hunting on the Avifauna of the Gippsland Lakes
• 2006 joint winning entry: Rachel Sanderson—Many Beautiful Things: Colonial Botanists’ accounts of the North Queensland rainforests
• 2006 joint winning entry: Sara Maroske—Ferdinand Mueller and the Shape of Nature: Nineteenth-century Plant Classification