Phillips wins 2023 Bragg Prize

Nicky Phillips has won the 2023 UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing for her essay ‘Trials of the heart’.

In the winning essay, Phillips ‘illuminates the scientific evidence presented at the 2022 inquiry into the Kathleen Folbigg case’. Twenty years after a jury found Folbigg guilty of murdering three of her children and of the manslaughter of another, new genetic evidence cast reasonable doubt—raising the possibility that two of the children died of natural causes—leading to Folbigg’s release from jail.

NewSouth said that the piece ‘leads the reader through the forensic complexity of the science with clarity while also demonstrating the impact of this case on how Australian legal proceedings will consider scientific evidence in the future’.

Said Phillips: ‘My story was trying to illuminate how science weighs the evidence for genetic causes of disease and how that fits with the legal system’s concept of reasonable doubt. It is an honour to receive the Bragg Prize for this story, which is tragic in many ways.’

Phillips’ essay was originally published in Nature with the title ‘She was convicted of killing her four children. Could a gene mutation set her free?’.

Along with this winner announcement, UNSW Press awarded runner-up prizes to Jo Chandler for ‘Buried treasure’ and Amalyah Hart for ‘Model or monster’.

All shortlisted pieces, originally announced last month, will be published in the forthcoming anthology The Best Australian Science Writing 2023 (ed by Donna Lu, NewSouth, November).

The Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing is for short nonfiction pieces of science writing that have been written for a general audience. It is named in honour of Australia’s first Nobel laureates, William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg. The winner receives $7000 and two runners up each receive $1500.

More information about the prize is available on the UNSW Press website.

Category: Awards Local news