The Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award

The Public History Award is sponsored by the Professional Historians Association (NSW & ACT) and University of Technology Sydney’s Australian Centre for Public History

The purpose of the Award is to encourage historians to produce a creative work of applied history drawing on their research. It aims to promote the value of public history and the pursuit of history as a rewarding professional career.

The winning entry will demonstrate excellence in writing or other media, and the ability to use original source materials, or demonstrate originality of interpreting the past in a contextual way. This work should engage with the field and practice of professional, public and applied history, using the past to inform contemporary concerns, issues and topics in creative ways.

The Professional Historians Association (NSW & ACT) is sponsoring the First Prize, which is a citation and $1000. The UTS Australian Centre for Public History (ACPH) is sponsoring the Second Prize, which is a citation and $500. Winners will also be promoted via social media and online, and in the HCNSW, PHA, and ACPH newsletters.

For further information and criteria, click here.

Winners of the Public History Award will be announced and prize presentations made during History Week, which is organised by the History Council of NSW (HCNSW).

Between 2020 and 2024, the Award was called the Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award and was jointly sponsored by the Macquarie University Centre for Applied History and the Professional Historians Association (NSW & ACT).

2024

The Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award was awarded to Collector and District Historical Society for their self-guided historical tour app: Collector History Walk.

2023

The Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award was awarded to Nicole Cama for her entry: Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst.

2022

The Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award was awarded to Alison Wishart for the online and onsite project Parks for the People! Jack Mundey and the Eastlakes Green Ban.

2021

The Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award was awarded to Tweed Regional Museum for their online exhibition and collection project Small Town Queer.

2020

The Macquarie-PHA Applied History Award was awarded to Martha Ansara & Robynne Murphy for their documentary on Women of Steel.

Prior to 2020, the PHA (NSW & ACT) sponsored an annual Public History Prize. This prize was open to NSW and ACT students engaged with the field and practice of public history. The winner received a certificate and prize of $500, presented at the PHA NSW & ACT’s Public History Prize awards night.

2017

Winner – Debbie Waddell, University of Newcastle
To flush or not to flush?: Can an artificial channel help save the Tuggerah Lakes?

Highly commended – Chloe Haywood-Anderson, Macquarie University
Erko Archives

2016

Alix Biggs, University of Sydney
Building Mosques, Building Community: Australian Mosque Establishment and the Muslim Migrant, 1967–1990

Highly commended – Daniel McKay
Silent Empire: Empire Unity and the First Observance of Two Minute’s Silence on Armistice Day, 1919

2015

Winner – Imogen Dixon-Smith, University of Sydney
Keeping up with the times: Complicating understandings of gender at the historic house Meroogal

Highly commended – Claire Ogle, University of Sydney
Gumine Oral History Archive

2014

Nathan Fallon, Macquarie University
Transmitting the memory of the Holocaust to the Australian Public: the cultivation of prosthetic memory in the Sydney Jewish Museum

2013