The Sydney Prize
Sydney Prize honors outstanding work in literature and scholarship. The winner receives a cash award and a plaque from the Phi Beta Kappa Society. The honor is named for the American philosopher Sidney Hook. It is awarded to a Phi Beta Kappa member who has national distinction in scholarship, undergraduate teaching and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education. A call for nominations is published in the Key Reporter and the General Newsletter about a year and a half before each Triennial Council meeting.
In addition to the monetary prizes, Sydney Prize winners are expected to promote science and use their position to educate the public about scientific issues that affect humanity. Some have even written books about their experiences, such as the 2024 Sydney Taylor Book Award winners Richard Ho and Lynn Scurfield for Two New Years and Mari Lowe and Elana K. Arnold for The Dubious Pranks of Shaindy Goodman.
Some Sydney Prizes are focused on the intersection of art and physics. One such example is the MAK Halliday Postgraduate Research Award, which is offered by the Linguistics Department. This prize honors the best conference presentations and publications by postgraduate research students in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. It was established in memory of MAK Halliday, the founding director of the Linguistics Department.
The Hillman Foundation also awards a monetary prize in the name of the late union leader Sidney Hillman. The foundation is a left-leaning organization that has been involved in controversy on several occasions. It is led by Workers United president emeritus Bruce Raynor and has a strong membership from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America labor union and its successors.
A number of other Sydney Prizes are awarded to journalists and others who have worked to bring about social change. The Black Lives Matter Sydney Peace Prize, for example, honors activists who advance human rights and nonviolence. This year the prize was given to Black Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.
Another type of Sydney Prize is the Edelstein Prize, which is given to authors who publish outstanding scholarly works on the history of technology. The prize is a $1,000 cash award and a citation. The award is sponsored by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and is named after Ruth Edelstein Barish’s husband, Sidney Edelstein, who was an expert on the history of dyes.
The Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize is awarded by the Overland magazine and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. It gives away $5,000 for first place and $750 for each of the runner-ups. Overland will publish the winning piece in its autumn issue. Its judges are Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh. They chose a shortlist from more than 500 entries that were submitted by both self-nominators and colleagues. They selected the winning story on the basis of its contribution to knowledge in and outside of Consumer Culture Theory, its conciseness and its potential to shape the course of the field in the future.