The AHA would like to thank all who applied for the 2019 Allan Martin Award, a research fellowship intended to assist early-career historians further their research in Australian history. The Award commemorates the contribution to Australian History of A. W. Martin (1926-2002), in particular his interest in and encouragement of students and younger colleagues over a lifetime of teaching and research.
The judges commented on the high quality of submissions. This annual award was announced at the AHA Conference dinner on 11 July 2019. Congratulations to the 2019 joint winners of the Allan Martin Award:
André Brett from the University of Wollongong receives the award for a project titled ‘Scars in the Country: An Enviro-Economic History of Railways in Australasia, 1850–1914’. He is examining how railway construction in the seven Australasian settler colonies altered not only their economies and polities but also transformed their regional environments. While there has been work on railway development this is an innovative account which considers the resource depletion and environmental consequences attributable to railways in Australasia. André Brett’s strong track record includes most recently his winning the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand’ s Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Development Prize for the best paper in the economic history stream at the 2018 Australian Historical Association conference.
Iain Johnston-White from the University of Roehampton works on the British Empire and warfare in the twentieth century. He receives this award for his research on the impact of the Second World War on Sydney as a port city. It is the ‘Australian part’ of an ambitious international and transnational project aiming at revealing the impact of war on subsequent postwar decolonisation. Iain Johnston-White argues that port cities were the primary nexus between the imperial periphery, Britain, and the wider world and the Second World War were socially transformative on the port cities economically and politically. The judges were impressed by the way he is placing the Dominions centre stage of his wider imperial project. The University of Roehampton has supported aspects of the research and the judges thought it was particularly apposite that this transnational project is internationally funded as well as researched.