John Legge Prize
John Legge Prize Past Winners
2021-2023
2023 Winner: Lukas Fort – University of Western Australia, ‘Making Indonesia clean from waste: The role of culture in the development of new waste management services in Sumbawa, Indonesia’
2023 Honourable Mention: Sarah Gosper – University of Melbourne, ‘Modest Expectations: Masculinity, Marriage, and the Good Life in Urban China’
2023 Honourable Mention: Felix Pal – ANU, ‘Weaponised Pluralism: Why Hindu Nationalists Need Muslim Friends’
2022 Winner: Kaira Zoe Alburo Cañete – University of New South Wales, ‘Becoming Resilient: Disaster Recovery in Post-Yolanda Philippines through Women’s Eyes’
2022 Runner-up: Jarrah Sastrawan – University of Sydney, ‘The Precarious Past: Historical Practices in Indic Java’
2021 Winner: Cheng Nien Yuan – University of Sydney, ‘The Storytelling State: Performing Life Histories in Singapore‘
2021 Runner-up: Rebecca Meckelburg – Murdoch University, ‘Subaltern Agency and the Political Economy of Rural Social Change‘
2011-2020
2020 Winner: Sophie Chao – Macquarie University
‘In the Shadow of the Palms: Plant-Human Relations Among the Marind-Anim, West Papua’
2019 Winner: Gwyn Andrew McClelland – Monash University
‘Legacies of Suffering, Theologies of Hope: Nagasaki Catholics, the Bomb and Dangerous Memory’
2019 Runner-up: Eve Warburton – Australian National University
‘Our Resources, Our Rules: A Political Economy of Nationalism in Indonesia’s Natural Resources Sectors’
2018 Winner: Kathryn Dyt – Australian National University
‘The Nguyễn Weather-World: Environment, Emotion and Governance in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam’
2018 Runner-up: Rebecca Gidley – Australian National University
‘Illiberal Transitional Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’
2017 Winner: Annie McCarthy – Australian National University
‘Under Development: Stories of Children and NGOs in Delhi, India’
2016 Winner: Jess Melvin – Melbourne University
‘Mechanics of Mass Murder: how the Indonesian Military Initiated and Implemented the Indonesian Genocide—The Case of Aceh’
2016 Runner-up: Le Hoang Ngoc Yen – Australian National University
‘Living Leprosy in Vietnam: Care, Affliction and Agency in the Shadows of a Cure’
2015 Winner: Cindy Bryson – Australian National University
‘A valuable life: seeing transformative practice among Phnom Penh’s waste pickers’
2015 Runner-up: Stephanie Chok – Murdoch University
‘Labour justice and political responsibility: an ethics-centred approach to temporary low-paid labour migration in Singapore’
2014 Joint Winner: Vannessa Hearman – University of Melbourne
‘Dismantling the “Fortress”: East Java and the Transition to Suharto’s New Order Regime’
2014 Joint Winner: Charanpal Singh Bal – Murdoch University
‘The Politics of Obedience: Bangladeshi Construction Workers and the Migrant Labour Regime in Singapore’
2014 Runner-up: Tom Cliff – Australian National University
‘Oil and Water: Experiences of Being Han in 21st-Century Korla, Xinjiang’
2013 Winner: Nicholas Cheesman – Australian National University
‘The Politics of Law and Order in Myanmar’
2013 Runner-up: Mark Pendleton – University of Melbourne
‘Sarin Traces: Memory Texts and Practices in Postward Japan, 1995-2010’
2012 Winner: Hongwei Bao – University of Sydney
‘Queer comrades: gay identity and politics in post socialist China’
2011 Winner: Dr Roberto Manuel Benedicto – University of Melbourne
‘Bright Lights, Gay Globality: Mobility, Class, and Gay Life in Twenty-first Century Manila’
2001-2010
2010 Winner: Dr William Fryer – University of Queensland
‘Interpretive and source-oriented approaches: modern Japanese free verse poetry in English translation’
2009 Winner: Assistant Professor Nanlai Cao – ANU
‘Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christians, Power and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou’
2008 Winner: Dr Damien Evans – University of Sydney
‘Putting Angkor on the Map: a New Survey of a Khmer “Hydraulic City” in Historical and Theoretical Context’
2007 Winner: Dr Wasan Panyagaew – ANU
‘Moving Dai: Towards an anthropology of people “living in place” in the borderlands of the upper Mekong’
2006 Joint Winner: Dr Katharine McKinnon – ANU
‘Locating Post-Development Subjects: discourses of intervention and identification in the highlands of northern Thailand’
2006 Joint Winner: Dr Romit Dasgupta – Curtin University of Technology
‘Crafting Masculinity: Negotiating Masculine Identities in the Japanese Workplace’
2005 Winner: Dr Adam Bowles – La Trobe University
‘Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India’
2004 Joint Winner: Dr Kaosar Afsana – Edith Cowan University
‘Power, Knowledge and Childbirth Practices: An Ethnographic Exploration in Bangladesh’
2004 Joint Winner: Dr Kama Maclean – La Trobe University
‘Power and Pilgrimage: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954’
2003 Winner: Dr Linda Rae Bennett – University of Queensland
‘Dialectics of Desire and Danger: maidenhood, sexuality and modernity in Mataram, eastern Indonesia’
2002 Winner: Dr Beatrice Trefalt – Murdoch University
‘Unexpected Returns: stragglers of the Imperial Army and memories of the Second World War in Japan, 1950-1975’
2001 Winner: Dr Michael Laffan – University of Sydney
‘The Umma Below the Winds: Mecca, Cairo, Reformist Islam and a Conceptualization of Indonesia’
1997-2000
2000 Winner: Dr Koichi Iwabuchi – University of Western Sydney
‘Returning to Asia: Japan in the Cultural Dynamics of Globalization, Localization and Asianization’
1999 Winner: Dr Michael Barr – University of Queensland
‘Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs behind the Man’
1998 Winner: Dr Seung-Ho Kwon – UNSW
‘Control and Conflict: the Historical Development of Labour Management within the Hyundai Business Group, 1946-1995’
1997 Winner: Dr Mark Hudson – ANU
‘Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis on the Japanese Island, 400 BC to AC 1400’
