Max Crawford Medal
The Max Crawford Medal is Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities. Presented annually by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, it recognises an early-career scholar whose published work contributes to public understanding of their discipline.
Eligibility
- The award is based on a nomination process and nominations will be accepted by Fellows and non-Fellows. The Nominator must obtain the permission of the Nominee before nomination. Self-nominations are not accepted.
- Nominees must be Citizens or Permanent Residents of Australia who are residing in Australia at the time of nomination.
- Nominees must be in the early stages of their careers, which will be determined, inter-alia, by how recently a PhD was conferred. In normal circumstances it should have been conferred no more than five years prior to the closing date for nominations.
- Nominees who have received their PhD more than five years ago but who can demonstrate a significant, commensurate period of career interruption (such as maternity or parental leave, carer’s responsibility, illness, unemployment, or non-research employment) may be considered eligible. This includes disruptions caused by COVID-19. A justification for the career interruption must be submitted as part of the proposal.
Criteria
- Quality and Impact: The Nominee’s work must be both of high quality, and deep impact. It must be academically sound and thoroughly researched and have contributed to a deeper understanding of a humanities discipline amongst the general public.
- Enrichment of Cultural Life: The Nominee’s work must have contributed to the enrichment of the cultural life of Australia or have the potential to do so.
- Media/Genre: The Nominee’s work can exist in any form, as long as it fulfils the selection criteria. It could be a monograph, a television or radio documentary, a series of journal articles, a scholarly website, or a film of academic merit, etc.
- Goal Focused: The Nominee’s work must focus specifically on a particular research goal within the wider discipline. For example, for a series of journal articles to meet this criterion, they must all have in their purpose the development and/or conclusion of a specific path of research in a humanities discipline.
Nominations
Nominations have closed for 2026 and will reopen in 2027.
Enquiries may be directed to grants@humanities.org.au.
Key dates
- Nominations open: 16 February 2026
- Nominations close: 29 March 2026
- Assessment period: April – May 2026
- Award announced: early August 2026
- Award presentation: Annual Academy Dinner (usually happens mid November)
Award history
This medal has been made possible by a generous bequest by Foundation Fellow and eminent historian Emeritus Professor R. M. (Max) Crawford OBE FAHA (1906–91). Professor Crawford greatly influenced the teaching of history in Australian universities and schools and helped found Historical Studies (the first academic journal dedicated to Australian history), the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Australian Humanities Research Centre.
Originally a biennial award, the Academy began awarding the Crawford Medal on an annual basis in 2019 to coincide with its 50th-anniversary celebrations.
Previous recipients
Since the inaugural award in 1992, recipients have gone on to forge strong careers in the Australian humanities community.
2026
Dr Anna Florin is an archaeobotanist, and a Lecturer in Archaeological Science in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. She works in partnership with Australian First Nations and other Indigenous and local communities across the Asia-Pacific, interweaving Indigenous cultural and ecological knowledges with archaeological science to investigate the dynamics of past food systems and landscape management practices over tens of millennia.
Anna’s research with Mirarr Traditional Owners at Madjedbebe (Kakadu region, NT) produced some of the earliest direct evidence globally for the use and complex processing of plant foods, as well as for long-term cultural continuity and resilience in the face of changing climate, sea levels, and vegetation across 65,000 years. Through her research, Anna has advanced the methods required to study past food systems in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, including anatomical identification and isotope methods; and challenged earlier Eurocentric models of human cultural evolution. Anna has recently been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellowship, to work with Indigenous community partners to investigate the breadth of past plant use across Sahul (the Pleistocene continent of Australia and New Guinea), and to support the continued and evolving use of this biocultural heritage for sustainable food futures.
2025
Dr Thao Phan is a feminist science and technology studies (STS) researcher who specialises in the study of gender and race in algorithmic culture. She is a Lecturer in Sociology (STS) at the Research School for Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU). Her research examines the role of AI systems in constituting categories such as gender, race, class, and nation.
She has published on topics including whiteness and the aesthetics of AI, big-data-driven techniques of racial classification, and the commercial capture of AI ethics research. She is the co-editor of the volumes An Anthropogenic Table of Elements (University of Toronto Press) and Economies of Virtue: The Circulation of ‘Ethics’ in AI (Institute of Network Cultures), and her writing appears in journals such as Big Data & Society, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technosocience, Science as Culture, and Cultural Studies.
Thao is an editorial board member of the internatioal journal’s Science, Technology & Human Values, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, and International Journal of Cultural Studies.
She is also an elected Council member for the Society for the Social Studies of Science, serves a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, and is the co-founder of AusSTS—Australia’s largest network of STS scholars.
2024
Dr Olga Boichak is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures and the Director of the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Sydney. She is a media sociologist researching the role of information and communication technologies in shaping public perception and outcomes of wars. Her scholarship lays the groundwork for new directions in the studies of peace and conflict, particularly in the areas of participatory war, influence operations, digital humanitarianism, and open-source intelligence. Currently, she is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow working on project that maps colonial topographies of digital sovereignty in Ukraine, as well as chief investigator on a suite of research projects that explore digital and social media in a geopolitical context.
She currently serves as Director of the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia, Executive Committee member of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand and is on the list of prominent Australians personally sanctioned by the Kremlin.
Read more about Dr Boichak’s work
2023
Dr TJ Thomson is a senior lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT, a core member of the RMIT Digital Ethnography Research Centre, an affiliate of the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Automated Decision-Making and Society, and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow. TJ is a former journalist who focuses his academic work on the visual aspects of news and journalism and on the concerns and processes relevant to those who make, edit, and present visual news.
He has broader interests in digital media, journalism studies, and visual culture and often focuses on under-represented identities, attributes, and environments in his research. TJ also holds a three-year research fellowship (2023-2026) funded by the Australian Research Council, to explore the quantity and quality of local visual news in regional and rural Australia, The Australian Academy of the Humanities funded the preliminary work on this project with a Travelling Fellowship in 2021. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Read more about TJ’s work: Improving media literacy in Australia.
2022
Dr Laura Smith-Khan is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney. Her research examines the inclusion and participation of minoritised groups in legal settings, especially migration processes, and seeks to uncover and address inequality. Her current project explores the role of migration lawyers and agents in these processes.
On receiving the award, Dr Smith-Khan said:
As a first-generation academic, I am profoundly grateful to be able to do what I love as my job. That privilege, and achievements like receiving this medal, are only possible thanks to the sustained and substantial support I have received from my mentors in academia. They remind me that scholarship is a communal endeavour and one in which we should always strive to lift each other up and create opportunities for each other. This is particularly important in interdisciplinary areas, and receiving this medal motivates me to continue my work with colleagues to build a scholarly network of researchers and practitioners in linguistics and law.
2021
Dr Andre Brett, a self-confessed ‘train buff’ and one of the leading historians working in and on the history of Australia and New Zealand, is the recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ 2021 Max Crawford Medal.
Despite being legally blind, Dr Brett has carved out an impressive career since receiving his PhD in History at the University of Melbourne. A University of Wollongong-based researcher and the recipient of numerous prizes and grants, he has researched at every major state and national repository in Australasia, has been published through major university presses and high ranked journals, and has enjoyed something of a ‘second career’ as a public historian producing content for exhibitions and television.
Dr Brett, who refuses to be pigeon-holed in his research work, said he was ‘absolutely stunned’ and ‘still can’t believe it’ on being told about his award. ‘I have worked with fantastic, supportive people, and in this I have been extraordinarily lucky.’
2012-2020
2020: Dr Billy Griffiths, Deakin University
2019: Dr Ronika Power, Macquarie University
2018: Dr Ana Tanasoca, University of Canberra
2018: Dr Raihan Ismail FAHA, Australian National University
2016: Dr Louise Richardson-Self, University of Tasmania
2016: Dr David McInnis FAHA, University of Melbourne
2014: Dr Tom Murray, Macquarie University
2012: Dr Lisa Ford FAHA, University of New South Wales
2012: Dr Michael Ondaatje, University of Newcastle
2002-2010
2010: Dr Roland Burke, La Trobe University
2008: Associate Professor Kate Crawford, University of New South Wales
2006: Dr Christopher Hilliard FAHA, University of Sydney
2004: Professor Kirsten McKenzie FAHA, University of Sydney (elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2017)
2002: Professor Glenda Sluga FAHA, University of Sydney (elected Fellow of the Academy in 2009)
1992-2000
2000: Professor John Hajek FAHA, University of Melbourne (elected Fellow of the Academy in 2005)
1997: Professor Tom Griffiths AO FAHA, Australian National University (elected Fellow of the Academy in 2000)
1996: Dr Lesley Stirling FAHA, University of Melbourne
1995: Professor Nicholas Thomas FBA FAHA, Australian National University (elected Fellow of the Academy in 1997)
1994: Dr Geremie Barmé, Australian National University
1993: Professor Hilary Fraser FAHA, University of Western Australia (elected Fellow of the Academy in 1995)
1992: Professor Janet McCalman AC FASSA FAHA, University of Melbourne (elected Fellow of the Academy in 1993)