Master of Arts student Stephanie Pfennigwerth wins the William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize

Stephanie Pfennigwerth has won the William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize, an annual competition run by the UK-based Society for the History of Natural History. The Prize was instituted in honour of the late William T. Stearn, a scholar whose work contributed much to the field of natural history, and to the Society. The Prize is awarded to the best original unpublished essay in the field of history of natural history, written by an undergraduate or postgraduate student in full or part-time education, anywhere in the world.

The title of Stephanie's essay is " 'The mighty cassowary': the discovery and demise of Dromaius ater (Vieillot), the King Island emu." The essay stems from Stephenie's Master of Arts thesis, which is about the natural and cultural history of the King Island emu, a unique and relatively unknown dwarf species driven to extinction in 1805. The essay discusses how human error, assumption, imagination and circumstance not only hampered scientific recognition and understanding of the King Island emu, but had material consequences on its conservation. In particular it examines the Baudin expedition of 1801-04, the only scientific expedition to collect specimens and make a detailed contemporaneous description of the birds' life history. Stephanie argues that rather than increasing knowledge about the species, the expedition and its literature contributed, albeit unwittingly, to the King Island emu's textual and literal extinction.

Sylvia Martin wins Magarey Medal for Biography

Sylvia Martin has won the 2008 Magarey Prize for Biography for Ida Leeson: A Life. Not a Blue-Stocking Lady (Allen & Unwin, 2006). The prize is awarded biennially and administered by ASAL and AHA.

Judges' citation:
This is a beautifully written life of Ida Leeson, the first woman to be appointed to a senior Australian library position in 1932, as Mitchell Librarian. It was a controversial appointment, and easily marks the central narrative of the Leeson's life, and yet it forms only one of many fascinating aspects of this biography.

Structured like a set of frames rather than a linear life, Sylvia Martin's biography brings into relief the rich literary, cultural and intellectual life of the nation through the life of Ida Leeson, and her under-acknowledged role in shaping those traditions. Leeson finds the missing log of Matthew Flinders in the London Shipping Lists, for example, and lobbies for the Angus & Robertson archives to be secured. Writers associated with the library as both staff and readers during her time include Christopher Brennan, Miles Franklin, Nancy Phelan, and Marjorie Barnard, and she was part of the anthroposophical community at Castlecrag started by the Burley-Griffins in the 1930s. During WWII she was part of an extraordinary intellectual coterie that Alfred Conlon brought together in the National Morale Committee, and after the war she left the Mitchell permanently to construct libraries in the South Pacific as part of their social development. Leeson's life attests to the astonishing role of librarians - and bibliographies - in the creation of nations and their histories.

Martin's comprehensive research sits lightly and easily in this biography of a woman who left very little textual evidence of her work and yet played such a central role in the provision of other people's research. The work and dilemmas of the biographer are also unobtrusive and yet importantly part of this narrative, reflexively considering historiography and biographic conventions. Both assured and nuanced in negotiating Leeson's strident reputation, mode of dress and address, and her longterm friendship with Florence Birch, Martin also untangles some of the tangible difficulties of writing biography in times when terms like 'lesbian' have different kinds of currency. Testimony to Martin's extraordinary rendering of Leeson is a lasting impression of a woman who is gruff and scary, efficient and driven, affable and talkative, loyal and valiant.

This is a compelling and intellectually fascinating book, which models the very best of contemporary biographical writing.

Judging Panel for the 2008 Prize were:
Alison Bartlett (UWA) Chair, David McCooey (Deakin) and Melanie Nolan (Victoria U, Wellington).