ANZAMEMS is pleased to celebrate recent member success in attaining the Australian Historical Associations General History Thesis Prize. The Prize, now renamed the Philippa Hetherington Prize, is awarded to the best postgraduate thesis in General History (excluding Australian history), and in 2025 was awarded to:

Elizabeth Burrell (Monash), “Words for Wellbeing: Charms, Caregiving and Health in England, 1300–1550”

Elizabeth Burrell’s thesis is based on reading a wide variety of Latin and medieval English sources on charms, situated in a careful theoretical framing toward her reconstruction of the living performance of caregiving in the practice of medieval charms. She takes seriously, using Latour’s actor-network theory and Gell’s ‘social instruments’ theory, the work of words and their material traces in the lives of medieval people, to show how charms might have come alive for patients at their moment of expression. This is not just a thesis about folk medicines but about the ways in which charms engaged with up-to-date scientific knowledges in their time. We particularly commend the originality of her focus on charm patient perspectives via a history from below with its emphasis on non-elites, and its sophisticated discussion of the materiality of charms. We also commend her comprehensive engagement with a broad array of relevant fields of medieval scholarship on health, medicine, belief, literacy, class, social structures, religious hierarchies, and English cultural variation. She considers literacy not just through individuals but also through communities that included the non-literate, and notes the practices of men in areas of spiritual and physical care-giving that have been considered exclusively female. This is work that is likely to attract the highest degree of scholarly commendation.

Dr Burrell joins fellow MEMS scholars Paige Donaghy (2024) and Freg (James) Stokes (2023) as previous recipients of the award.

ANZAMEMS is pleased to celebrate some of our members’ recent successes in attaining fellowships through the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Humanities Travelling Fellowships enable early-career researchers to undertake research overseas, where they may access materials otherwise inaccessible, connect with international organisations, researchers and forge new networks.

See the AAH press release for the 2025 round of awardees. Among these are two ANZAMEMS members.

Dr Jennifer Nicholson (University of Sydney)
Shakespeare’s False Friends: French English, Early Modern England, and the Stage

False Friends addresses the curiosity of there being no monograph or extended scholarship concerning William Shakespeare’s knowledge of French. Dr Nicholson’s research considers how relationships between the porous edges of French and English in early modern plays, including those by Shakespeare and his contemporary, Christopher Marlowe, generate new readings of theatre’s textual and philosophical uncertainties.

Under the Fellowship, Dr Nicholson will travel to the United States, Scotland and England to access archival sites containing manuscript materials relating to Shakespeare. In addition to her research, Dr Nicholson will co-facilitate a seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America’s 2026 conference and will visit research centres across the United Kingdom.

Dr Mairi Hill (University of Melbourne)
Women, Language, and Labour in Medieval and Early Modern England

Women played an important economic role in medieval and early modern society. However, the profitability of female labour in early capitalist society is rarely discussed. Women’s work and spaces of work are presented as communal and places which encouraged women’s alleged propensity for excessive speech. This project aims to answer questions around relationships between women, spaces of work and how excessive speech may have contributed to language related to “women’s work” and shaped attitudes still prevalent in contemporary society.

Under the Fellowship, Dr Hill will travel to the United Kingdom to access historical records about premodern women’s labour across the UK National Archives, The London Archives and Surrey House Centre. Dr Hill intends for the research completed under this Fellowship to form the foundation of a second monograph.

Dr Nicholson and Dr Hill join a rich tradition of ANZAMEMS success in for Humanities Travelling Fellowships including recent awardees Matthew Firth (2024), Kirstie Flannery (2022), Michele Seah (2022), Frederic Kiernan (2021), and Janet Wade (2021).