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CHASS Prizes

Prizes

2025 marked the twelfth year of the annual CHASS Australia Prizes. The Australia Prizes honour distinguished achievements by Australians working, studying, or training in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) sector, including academics, researchers, practitioners, philanthropists, policy makers, and students.

CHASS Future Leaders Writing Prize

SUBMIT HERE

$2000 Prize Money

This prize is awarded to a future leader for a piece of written work (e.g., essay, scholarly article, media article, book chapter) from the perspective of the Humanities, Arts or Social Sciences.

Self-nominations are welcome. Applications must be sole-authored, written in English, and should deepen our understanding of aspects of Australian society and culture. Nominees must not have reached 35 years of age before the nomination cut-off date of 31 December the previous year, and be citizens or permanent residents of Australia. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The written work may be published or unpublished and must not exceed 12,000 words.

Submissions are due 15th of September, 2025.

The winner must agree to participate in publicising the award. In all cases, copyright remains the property of the entrant, or the relevant publisher, and CHASS will clearly attribute any submitted material to the entrant.

Written work produced by CHASS Board members cannot be nominated.

Only one submission is permitted per applicant.

The Prize
The prize winner will receive:

$2000 prize money
A listing on the CHASS website award page
Promotion through the CHASS membership and social media

Voting Process
An eminent jury of academics and other professionals will judge the award. Jurors may request additional information from applicants during the judging process.

Writing Prize – Judging Criteria

25% - Quality: Demonstrates a high standard of thoroughness, eloquence, and persuasiveness

25% - Contribution to HASS research, scholarship and/or learning

25% - Orginality: Displays creativity and innovation through its approach, offering new ways of thinking, applying theory, or employing methods that advance the HASS disciplines.

25% - Clarity: Is clearly structured, well-written, and effectively presented, making complex ideas accessible and compelling to both academic and public audiences.

SUBMIT HERE

2024 Winner
The 2024 winner of the CHASS Future Leaders Writing Prize was Jack Jacobs for his piece "To live with respect in a world worth living in" - What I've learned from my friend, Stan Grant. The piece was originally published on the ABC's Religion & Ethics in December 2024 and reflected on how he was broken open to our nation in a deeper way under the guidance of his friend and mentor, Stan Grant - with whom he travelled, learning the ways of the Wiradjuri, in the midst of the heat of the Voice referendum and Stan Grant's difficult departure from Q+A.

This piece is both a lament for our country and a reflection on the aspirations he still holds for it - aspirations that arise from the deepest sorrows surrounding the future of our First Nations peoples, and from the profound personal transformation he underwent as a non-First Nations person during that time.

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Past Recipients

2020
Victoria Brookman

2021 Winner
Emma Cupitt for her writing Dust and Ashes.

Note, there were no winners selected for 2022 and 2023.

CHASS Prize for Distinctive Work in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

SUBMIT HERE

This prize is for a performance, exhibition, research project or a specific advance in policy development in any HASS field. Performances or exhibitions must have been open to the public between 1 January and 31 December in the previous year. Policy work and research may have commenced earlier, but must have been completed during the previous year.

Self-nominations are welcome. Nominees should provide sufficient evidence to allow judges to assess the impact of the performance, exhibition, project or policy. The nature of this evidence is up to the nominator (e.g., critical reviews, impact assessments, spin-offs, new policies).

Performances, exhibitions or policy work may have taken place abroad, but nominees must be citizens or permanent residents of Australia, and the work must have some relevance to Australian life. All materials submitted must be in English. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Submissions are due 15th of September, 2025.

The winner/s must agree to participate in publicising the award. In all cases, copyright remains the property of the entrant, or relevant publisher or authority, and CHASS will clearly attribute any submitted material to the entrant.

Works produced by CHASS executive members can be nominated but the author/s or creator/s cannot be part of the voting process.
Only one submission is permitted per applicant.

The Prize
The prize winner will receive:

$2000 prize money
A listing on the CHASS website award page
Promotion through the CHASS membership and social media

Voting Process
An eminent jury of academics and other professionals will judge the award. Jurors may request additional information from applicants during the judging process.

Distinctive Work Prize – Judging Criteria
20% - Quality: Demonstrates a high standard of execution - whether artistic, scholarly, or practice-based. The work should reflect depth, care, and craft, through thorough research, compelling expression, or technical excellence.

20% - Contribution to Australian Cultural and Intellectual Life: The work makes a meaningful contribution to public discourse, cultural understanding, or intellectual development within the HASS disciplines. This may include extending or challenging existing knowledge, influencing policy, or reaching new audiences.

20% - Originality: Presents a fresh perspective, distinctive approach, or novel application of theory, method, or creative form. Stands out for its innovation or conceptual ambition. 20% - Impact and Reach: Demonstrates evidence of influence or engagement beyond the individual or institution - such as media coverage, community participation, policy relevance, critical acclaim, or uptake by stakeholders.

20% - Relevance to Australian Society or Australian Life: Clearly engages with themes, issues, or experiences relevant to Australia. May address social, political, cultural, or environmental questions central to national discourse.

SUBMIT HERE

2024 Winners: Distinguished Prof Cassandra Atherton A/Prof Jessica Wilkinson & A/Prof Tracy O'Shaughnessy for ‘Poetic Portraits’ (2023) was a successful program of community-based and community-directed poetry activities that explored the ‘uses of poetry’ and what poetry can ‘do’ to, for and within communities.

The project used a combination of poetry and publishing as a means for generating meaningful community connections and elevating everyday voices. In the wake of Victoria’s long pandemic lockdowns, ‘Poetic Portraits’ addressed issues relating to community wellbeing and feelings of disconnection by using poetry workshops to encourage self-expression and community dialogue. The project team developed partnerships with local councils across Victoria (City of Greater Bendigo, Pyrenees Shire, Yarra Ranges Council, Frankston City Council) and liaised with council representatives in order to shape poetry-writing workshops that addressed specific community and demographic concerns. Supported by Creative Australia funding, the team used poetry’s toolkit to elevate underrepresented lives and encourage empowerment through creative self-expression. Workshops provided a space for listening, respect and positive reinforcement, giving lessons on poetry craft to enable participants to express aspects of themselves and their experiences through poems. Then, unique poetry publication approaches provided a platform to draw communities together and allow voices, stories and perspectives to be heard. This publication aspect of the project involved a WIL collaboration with students in RMIT’s Master of Writing and Publishing, providing them with experiences in editing, design, proofreading, engaging with participants and events organisation. The project has, therefore, reached across the domains of research, teaching and engagement in its exploration of what poetry can ‘do’ to, for and within communities.

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Past Recipients

2023 Winner: Vic McEwan for 'Face to Face: The New Normal'

The panel selected Vic's work due to its ‘distinctiveness’, the cross over between HASS and medical science together with the significant, beautiful and tangible outcomes of the project.

"Face to Face: The New Normal" evolved through four years of artistic research with patients experiencing facial nerve paralysis due to conditions like cancer, brain tumours and Bell’s Palsy. It explored the intersection of medical science and the arts, addressing human experiences of illness, trauma and identity.

The project was delivered by Vic McEwan as part of his PhD. PhD supervisors were Dr Claire Hooker, Dr Susan Coulson and Dr Paul Dwyer

This work is distinctive because it is the first time an artist has been accepted into the PhD program at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney, potentially setting a precedent nationwide. The artistic process was undertaken at The Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, a cancer research hospital (Sydney, NSW), specifically at the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic. Here, for the first ever time, a contemporary artist became an integral part of the clinical team, working alongside multi-disciplinary specialists and employing artistic methods to contribute to patient care. Instead of adopting the role of an arts-therapist, this project explored the value of open-ended, experimental contemporary arts practice.
Facial Nerve Paralysis profoundly impacts individual identity, leading to high rates of depression and significant social stigmatisation. Patients often express that they encounter substantial social and psychological impacts resulting from their condition, and that these issues are often overlooked in conventional biomedical encounters. This project not only advanced the concept of "socially engaged arts practice" as an impactful form of care giving, but also validated it as a legitimate form of art-making. It presented 15 artworks in a three month exhibition in 2022 at the Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery (and an earlier development period at the Tate Liverpool in the UK). During this time, it showed immense benefits to patients and medical professionals who engaged with it, while also encouraging general audiences to explore their own complex responses to facial difference, discrimination, and vulnerability. The success of the research outputs have led to an invitation being made to Vic McEwan to become an ongoing member of the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic team. This is an extraordinary development in that it is recognition of the immense potential that open-ended, non defined, creative activity can have on the patient experience.

2022 Joint Winners: Marg Rogers et al. and Ian Michael & Chris Isaacs

Marg Rogers et al. 'Child and Family Resilience Programs children's literature project'
Marg Roger's et al. project produced a suite of twelve free, online research-based children’s storybooks created from the narratives of Australian children and their families from the defence and veteran community. The books build children’s resilience to deal with the stresses of military family life or when their parent gives their physical/mental health in service. This is the first time Australian young children’s narratives from defence/veteran families have been voiced, enabling them to see their lives reflected in young children’s literature. This builds children’s sense of identity and belonging.

Ian Michael & Chris Isaacs York
Ian & Chris's project is a play titled 'York' that is set in and around an abandoned hospital in York, on Ballardong Nyoongar country. This epic truth-telling play blends humour and horror to uncover our buried histories. Traversing multiple eras and inspired by 200 years of real accounts, this daring new work explores how stories are told – and who tells them. York was Shortlisted for in Nick Enright's Prize for Playwriting as part o the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2022. York is a raw, resonating new work written by two incredibly talented local artists Ian Michael (Wilman Nyoongar) and Chris Isaacs.

2022 Social Sciences Week discussion between the then CHASS President, Dan Woodman, and one of the 2021 winners of the CHASS Distinctive Works Prize, Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy.

2022 CHASS Distinctive Works Award winner Marg Rogers in conversation with Prof Dan Woodman, the then CHASS President, for Social Sciences Week.

2021 Joint Winners: Carla Pascoe Leahy and Christiana Aloneftis

Carla Pascoe Leahy

My project has charted the changing experience of first-time motherhood in Australia since 1945. By creating and analysing a new archive of interviews, it has established new understanding of what becoming a mother feels like, what supports new mothers need, and whether the experience has become more challenging over time.
Carla's Bio
Project outputs

Christiana Aloneftis

My goal is to equip Australian opera singers with the necessary language resources to compete on the international stage by providing quality, accessible, industry-specific coaching 1:1 and via live group masterclass, online. The CHASS Scholarship will support me in organising an online Masterclass for disadvantaged Australian singers who would like to re-invest in their artistic careers post-covid. This type of training is deeply lacking in Australian tertiary institutions and must become a stable in the continued training of singers from student to professional levels. As both an active singer and coach, I am able to fully communicate and embody the concepts I impart in my singers and connect declamatory technique and diction theory with a simple, practical application. I currently work in theatres and with singers from theatres which underlines the relevance of this training. It is not purely academic. The training I am offering is FROM the industry FOR the industry.

Christiana's Bio

Christiana's Website

2020

Robyn Gulliver

The Campaign Explorer database and citizen science project is a Australia’s first ever large scale database of environmental collective action, designed to help activists and researchers design more effective grassroots activism to address our environmental challenges. It has two project components. The first is a dataset hosted by the University of Queensland on an OmekaS website platform (https://enviro-activism.uqdhss.cloud.edu.au/s/emap/page/about). The database is available for download by researchers and activists and includes information on over 1,600 environmental groups, 900 environmental campaigns and 195 climate change campaign outcomes. The second component is the citizen science platform, found at http://www.activismresearchhub.org/campaignexplorer/, which offers a range of tasks and projects for volunteers to contribute to the project.

These two components enable capturing environmental advocacy history and practice which has gone unrecorded in the past. The data collected also includes historical campaign archives, spatial data to enable mapping of environmental groups and campaigns, and the identification of network ties between groups. The innovative development of a citizen science component enables new data and insights to be added every day. To date, the data has informed a range of academic papers, as well as diverse outputs such as ArcGIS storymaps, Twitter stories and activist reports.

CHASS Prize for a Student in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

This prize is for a student essay, project, performance or exhibition that best exemplifies the contribution of HASS to our understanding of our nation and us. The nominated work must have been completed between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020. Honours/post-graduate/doctoral theses are not eligible. Students enrolled at any level in any Australian tertiary educational institution are eligible to be nominated. Self-nominations are welcome.

Nominators should provide sufficient evidence to allow judges to assess their work. The nature of this evidence is up to the nominator (for e.g.: critical reviews, impact assessments). All works must be in English.

This prize will not be running in 2023.

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Past Recipients

2020

Robyn Gulliver, the winner of the 2020 Distinctive Works Prize, was also the winner of the Student Prize for 2020.

Additional past recipients will be added soon.

FLASH Awards

This Award was introduced in 2020. The first FLASH Award was for students in Year 11 and 12 and in undergraduate course at University to express their views in a one minute video about the government’s 2020 proposed changes to undergraduate university fees, raising costs for most students in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

The 2021 FLASH Award is Creativity in Covid; an open prize for any creative work - visual, auditory, or performed - born/inspired from Covid related impacts. Nominees should provide enough evidence for judges to assess the innovation and connection to Covid.

Prize: $2,000
Submission deadline: October 1, 2021. Submit online here.

This prize will not be running in 2023 or 2024.