Connors awarded Magarey Medal 2016

Libby Connors was awarded the biennial Magarey Medal for Biography for Warrior: A Legendary Leader’s Dramatic Life and Violent Death on the Colonial Frontier (A&U) at the 2016 Australian Historical Association (AHA) awards.

The Magarey Medal is open to women who have published a biography on an Australian subject within the past two years. Connors was chosen from a shortlist of four that also included One Life: My Mother’s Story (Kate Grenville, Text), Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather (Karen Lamb, UQP) and Mannix (Brenda Niall, Text).

The medal was first awarded in 2004, with the $10,000 prize since indexed to inflation each year it’s presented.

The $2,000 Kay Daniels Award, which recognises ‘outstanding original research that focuses on Australian convict history and heritage’, was awarded to Sue Castrique for Under the Colony’s Eye: Gentlemen and Convicts on Cockatoo Island 1839-1869 (Anchor Books); and the $1,500 W K Hancock prize, which recognises an Australian scholar who has published a first book in any field of history, was awarded to The Company and The Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Adam Clulow, Columbia University Press).

To see the shortlists for each awards category, click here. For more information about the prize, visit the AHA website here.

Category: Local news