HDR Student Zoe Smith has received the 2023 Max Kelly Award for a work of excellence in any aspect of Australian history. She received the award for her essay, ‘A prisoner on the rack’: Marital rape in late-nineteenth-century colonial women’s fiction'.

Zoe says her feminist interpretation of violence in women’s fiction and non-fiction uncovered previously unexplored depictions of marital rape and late-colonial writers' nuanced understanding of wives’ consent and domestic violence more broadly. 

The History Council of NSW Annual History Awards were announced on Tuesday 5 December 2023 at a ceremony in the Anzac Memorial Auditorium. 

The Max Kelly Award is given annually to an early career historian for a work of excellence in any aspect of Australian history. The Award was established as a tribute to Associate Professor Maxwell John Kelly (1935-1996), the first elected President of the History Council.

Also, Zoe was awarded a 2024 National Library of Australia summer research scholarship, the Seymour Scholarship for her work: The Woman Always Pays: Cultural Understandings of Domestic Violence in Colonial Women's Writings, 1880-1914.

The National Library of Australia Scholarships are available to Australian PhD students, offering recipients the opportunity to further their postgraduate research using material from the Library’s collections over a 6-week residency. 

Double congratulations!