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This award has been established through the generosity of Mrs Jessie Serle to honour the contribution to Australian history of her former husband, Dr Geoffrey Serle, for the best postgraduate thesis in Australian History completed and examined during the previous two years. The $2500 biennial award may be used as a publication subsidy or to subsidise other costs associated with transforming the thesis into a book, such as the cost of carrying out extra research, funding permissions, copyright fees or illustrations. Best Postgraduate Thesis in Australian History Examined in 2008 or 2009 Dr Simon Sleight 'The Territories of Youth: Young People and Public Space in Melbourne, c. 1870-1901' PhD Thesis, Monash University, 2008. Judges: Prof. Stuart Macintyre (chair); Dr Julia Martinez
2010 Serle Award Commendations Dr Malcolm Allbrook '"Imperial Family"': The Prinseps, Empire and Colonial Government in India and Australia' PhD Thesis, Griffith University, 2008 Macolm Allbrook's study of the Prinsep family and their lives in colonial India and Australia challenges our understandings of Australian imperial history. His transnational approach demonstrates the value of viewing Australian history within the wider frame of British imperialism. In this case connections with British India are explored to show the ways in which the Prinsep family imbued their activities in Australia with orientalism drawn from Indian experience. As the first Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, Henry Prinsep was an agent of colonialism, but he was also a man whose family was imbued with a firm belief in colonialism adhering to humanitarian principles. Using private letters and personal accounts, Allbrook provides us with a balanced and subtle biography of the man and his family, reminding us that the practice of colonialism was influenced not only by broad visions of empire, but also by the individual's intimate, family experiences. Dr Claire McLisky, 'Settlers on a Mission: Faith, Power and Subjectivity in the Lives of Daniel and Janet Matthews' PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2008. Claire McLisky demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of new imperial scholarship, drawing on Stoler's study of the intimate as a site where colonial power was played out. Her historical exploration of Christian missionary work in Australia is largely biographical, drawn from the rich archive of letters, diaries and reports from the Matthews themselves and the Maloga mission that they founded. McLisky shows how Janet's romantic involvement with Daniel encouraged his decision to begin a school for Indigenous children on the Murray. Her work makes an elegant contribution to the literature on settler colonialism and notions of virtue, arguing persuasively for a nuanced reading of colonial subjectivities so as to allow for a more critical usage of missionary reports in the context of Native Title claims. Best Postgraduate Thesis in Australian History Examined in 2006 or 2007 Marina Larsson, 'The Burdens of Sacrifice: War Disability in Australian Families 1914–1939' PhD Thesis, La Trobe University, 2006 Previous studies of repatriation have focused on government policy or on returned soldiers themselves. This thesis breaks new ground with its examination of the experiences of the families of men who returned ill or disabled. Parents, wives, children and others shared the burdens of the soldiers' suffering for many years afterwards and indeed a strength of the thesis lies in its focus on the entire interwar period. The care the families offered, the comfort and solace they provided, the torments they endured, their struggles with repatriation authorities and the successes they achieved have previously remained largely hidden from historians' view behind the walls of the family home. In Larsson's thesis they are revealed with startling clarity. Several features of this thesis stood out for the judges. As well as the originality of the topic, the judges were most impressed by the breadth of research, which ranges across a diffuse variety of archival sources, a large number of contemporary publications, and interviews with surviving family members. Repatriation policy, veteran activism, private experience and memorialisation are all handled astutely. The author displays a near total mastery of the secondary and theoretical literature in these diverse areas, and makes valuable contributions to them all. The judges were also impressed by the author's writing talents. Personal vignettes are used to excellent effect, and her research findings are relayed in prose that is exact, evocative and at times emotional. Well-chosen illustrations are also enlightening. This excellent thesis represents a considerable advance in our understanding of Australia's experience of World War I and its legacies. It will make a fine book. 2008 Serle Award Highly Commended Olwen Valda Pryke, 'Australia House: Representing Australia in Great Britain, 1901-1939' PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2006 Olwen Valda Pryke explores the history of Australia House in London as a realisation of the new Australian Commonwealth's dream of placing the Australian nation at the centre of the British Empire. Debates over the physical form and functions of Australia House are embedded in a cultural history which vividly illuminates the part the building played in the 'performance' of Australianness in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. A complex web of empire is revealed: Australian sensitivities to its public image in Britain and its promotions aimed at the British public; rivalries with other Dominions, notably Canada; and ongoing tensions with the Australian States via the Agents General. The judges were particularly impressed by the combinations of cultural, architectural and political history employed by the author as she explores Australia House as building, as performance and as function. This history of Australia House enriches our understandings of an evolving Australian national identity in the first half of the twentieth century and the way it was presented and performed at the Imperial centre. Robert Bollard, '"The Active Chorus": The Mass Strike of 1917 in Eastern Australia' PhD Thesis, Victoria University, 2007 This strongly revisionist history of the mass strike in eastern Australia in 1917 situates the event in a long period of labour militancy from 1916 to 1919. In a lively narrative Robert Bollard convincingly demonstrates the crucial role played in the strike by the rank and file and is genuinely revisionist in its 'history from below' perspective on the causes and course of the strike, the reasons for its defeat, and the inevitability and totality of that defeat. The 'rank and filist' explanation draws effectively on that historiographical debate and brings its theoretical insights to bear on a case study of one of the key events in Australian labour history. The provocative thesis argues principally that it was not the undisciplined militancy of the mass 'active chorus' which doomed the strike but the failures of union leadership, and further that the strike's defeat was not, as most historians would have it, even close to inevitable. This is an original and largely successful thesis, which should find a wider readership. Best Postgraduate Thesis in Australian History Examined in 2005 Jessie Mitchell: 'Flesh, Dreams and Spirit: Life on Aboriginal Mission Stations 1825–1850 A History of Cross-Cultural Connections' (ANU PhD Thesis, 2005) This thesis makes a major contribution to the historiography of colonial Australia. Displaying an enviable command of the historical and associated literatures, Dr Mitchell deploys a massive body of archival source material in order to reconstruct the complex patterns of interaction between Aborigines, missionaries, Protectors and other white colonists on three mission stations and a protectorate established in New South Wales and Port Philip Bay during the first half of the nineteenth century. The various ways in which Indigenous peoples negotiated with European intruders on their lands, at a time when frontier conditions were far less heavily weighted against Aborigines than would later be the case, are analysed with sensitivity in clear and engaging prose. Emphasizing the importance of Evangelical and humanitarian influences before the rise of a purportedly scientific racial thinking, Dr Mitchell situates relationships in 'the contact zone' as 'conversations', where the possibility of Aboriginal agency was always acknowledged and cultural learning was on occasion two-way. She also rejects the previous assumption of outright failure in relations between missionaries and protectors and the Aboriginal people with whom they interacted. This remarkably mature piece of historical scholarship advances understanding of the complexity of the colonial situation, moving beyond simplistic models of conflict and resistance to a more nuanced and realistic approach. While Dr Mitchell's reflexive writing touches very lightly on theoretical perspectives it nevertheless displays an awareness of the most recent literatures on sexuality, post-colonialism and critiques of grand narratives. Besides adding to Australian colonial historiography it is a worthy contribution to international histories of colonial frontiers and to the broad field of mission studies. We congratulate Dr Mitchell on a fine achievement.
Alison McKinnon
Wilfrid Prest July, 2006 Best Postgraduate Thesis in Australian History Examined in 2003 or 2004 Bartolo Ziino, 'A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War' (University of Melbourne, PhD 2003). 2005 Serle Award Commendation Catherine Mary Gilchrist, 'Male Convict Sexuality in the Penal Colonies of Australia 1820-1850' (University of Sydney, PhD 2004). |
Dr Simon Sleight
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