Congratulations to our Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths (School of History) and Emeritus Professor Libby Robin (Fenner School of Environment and Society) who have jointly been awarded the ASEH 2019 Distinguished Career in Public Environmental History award. The American Society for Environmental History (the oldest environmental history institution in the world) will present the award at its Annual Congress in Columbus Ohio, in April 2019.

The prize is awarded biennially at the discretion of the executive of the American Society for Environmental History. It is unusual for this great honour to go to scholars outside the United States of America.

The citation from the ASEH Executive Committee reads as follows:

“We discussed the career of several excellent candidates for this award. In the end we felt strongly that Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths should jointly be awarded this distinguished prize. They have - through their work in communities and museums, through engagement for ICEHO (the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations), through the establishment of the AUS-NZ-Network in Environmental History, through regular workshops for doctoral students in Canberra over the last 20 years (to which ASEH members were invited as special guests), through their outreach activities and involvement with environmental artists and environmental NGOs - dedicated a quarter century (essentially their whole academic career) to public environmental history. They have been selfless, never self-promoting.”

Head of School Professor Frank Bongiorno also sends his congratulations:

Never were truer words spoken. My warmest congratulations to Libby and Tom on this richly-deserved honour, which is also testimony of their distinguished contribution to environmental history at the Australian National University, and the great strength of this field here over so many years.

More info about the American Society for Environmental History can be found on https://aseh.net/