News

ACU Professor wins award for best reference book

ACU’s leadership in humanities has been further recognised with a prominent book award for one of our senior researchers.

Professor Joy Damousi, Director of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at ACU, won the Association of American Publishers Prose Award for the Best Reference of Textbook in Humanities for The Cambridge World History of Violence.

Edited by Professor Damousi with Professor Phillip Dwyer from the University of Newcastle, The Cambridge History of Violence offers a comprehensive account of the ways in which violence has been practised, conceptualised and legitimised from prehistory to the present.

The Prose Awards honour the best scholarly books published in a year. A panel of 23 judges selected subject winners in 45 categories from 595 entries.

“These 45 works all represent exceptional scholarship and significant contributions to their various fields,” said Syreeta Swann, Vice President, Programs and Administration, at AAP.

Professor Damousi is the immediate past president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a highly recognised scholar who has published work on Australian cultural history, women’s history, memory, trauma and the aftermaths of war, the history of emotions and psychoanalysis, and migration history in relation to refugees, humanitarianism and internationalism.