State Library of NSW 2024 fellowships announced

The State Library of NSW (SLNSW) has announced the recipients of its 2024 research fellowships, worth a total of $186,000 across eight categories, on the 50th anniversary of its research program.

Sheila Ngoc Pham is the recipient of the inaugural Imago Fellowship, worth $50,000, and said of her project: ‘My creative nonfiction project focuses on Australian speculative fiction from the 70s–90s, inspired by a largely forgotten writer named Anne Spencer Parry (1931–1985). It will be a book blending bibliomemoir, biography, cultural and social history, literary critique and reportage.’

The fellowship recipients and their projects are:

Imago Fellowship ($50,000)

• Sheila Ngoc Pham for ‘Fantasia: On Anne Spencer Parry and Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction in the Late 20th Century’

Australian Religious History Fellowship ($20,000)

• Zac Roberts for ‘Changing Representations of Indigenous Peoples in the NSW Jewish Press’

C H Currey Memorial Fellowship ($20,000)

• Dominic Kelly for ‘From Cold War to Culture War: Quadrant and Australian Conservatism’

Nancy Keesing Fellowship ($25,000)

• Clara Sitbon for ‘Piecing the Puzzle: Mapping the Literary Works of Carter Brown’

Dr A M Hertzberg Fellowship ($25,000)

• Luciano Cardellicchio for ‘From Caravans to Schools, from Airplanes to Houses: Plywood Innovation in the Post-War Construction Sector of Australia’

Ross Steele Fellowship ($12,000)

• Ruth Pullin for ‘From Sketchbook to Canvas: Eugene von Guérard’s Sketchbooks and the Making of Pictures’

Merewether Fellowship ($12,000)

• Nicholas Pitt for ‘Benevolent Cattle? A More-Than-Human History of the Hawkesbury Benevolent Society and the Place of Benevolence in the Colonial Project of NSW’

D S Mitchell Memorial Fellowship ($12,000)

• Shirleene Robinson for ‘Mapping the Contribution, Strategies and Networks of Women in Australia’s First LGBTIQ+ Rights Groups, 1969–1974’.

The library also announced the inaugural recipients of its Summer Fellows Program, with each recipient to receive $1000 and the opportunity to undertake research at the library:

• Phillip Bartlett for ‘A Possible Narrative of the Macquarie Chest’s Bottom Drawer’
• Ira Friedberg for ‘Bad Times in Red Brick Flats’
• Anita Gowers for ‘Pictures Frames in the State Library of NSW Picture Collections‘
• Moon Kerr for ‘George Goodman’s Daguerreotypes of the Lawson Family’
• Annabelle McEwen for ‘How the Body is Defined and Usurped via Visual Mediation’
• Hamish McPherson for ‘Transgender Liberation in NSW 1950–2000’
• Eloise Reddy for ‘1980–90s Cultural Planning and Contemporary Placemaking Discourse’
• Bronwyn Rennex for ‘Ralph Clark and the Birds’
• Suzanne Smith for ‘The Save Our Sons Movement During the Vietnam War’.

SLNSW state librarian Caroline Butler-Bowdon said: ‘Over the past fifty years, the library has awarded more than $2.8 million to 196 fellows, making a profound impact on the careers of many of our most distinguished historians and thinkers while deepening our understanding of our shared histories.’

Previously announced by SLNSW was the Coral Thomas Fellow (worth $110,000), which was awarded to Nancy Cushing, for ‘Beauty and the Beasts: A History of Animals in Sydney’.

More information about the fellowships is on the SLNSW website.

Pictured (L–R): Sheila Ngoc Pham and Caroline Butler-Bowdon.

Category: Awards Local news