This prize is awarded to the best paper presented by a postgraduate student to the biennial Australian Historical Association conference.  The winner receives a two-year subscription to Australian Historical Studies, and a $250 book voucher for Taylor & Francis books.

The winner was Ms Catherine Bishop of the History Department at the Australian National University for her paper:  'Women Settlers and Colonial Economies:  Re-examining the Public/Private Sphere Dichotomy in Mid-nineteenth Century New South Wales'.

The citation by the two senior scholars who judged the prize, was:

'Women Settlers and Colonial economies' challenges the notion that women in mid-to-late nineteenth century Sydney accepted the domestic ideology of separate spheres and tended to reproductive roles rather than productive paid work.  Drawing with imagination skill from a wide variety of sources - including census data, contemporary newspapers, personal accounts and insolvency records - the author writes engaging prose and makes a convincing case that in spite of legal, political and economic barriers many women were productive as well as reproductive workers.  In its forensic use of online sources to recreate women's hidden lives, an 'inside out' reading of those sources, and a 'virtual walk' down Pitt Street in 1858, the essay is also methodologically innovative and suggests novel approaches to women's history'.

The Editors

Australian Historical Studies, Volume 42, issue 2, June 2011.