In the spirit of its namesake, the Sidney Prize recognizes outstanding undergraduate writing in any form and discipline that meets the high standards of academic integrity set by its namesake. Each submission is considered on its own merits and must be submitted under a pseudonym. The deadline for submissions is the last day of each month.
The Sydney Prize is awarded monthly to an outstanding piece of journalism that appeared in print or online during the previous month. Nominations are accepted for any published work that exemplifies reporting skills and social justice impact. All nominations must be received by the last day of each month and are judged on a rolling basis, meaning that articles published in early or late editions of newspapers or magazines are eligible for the prize as long as they were originally written and published during the same month.
Winners of the prize receive a $500 honorarium, which is presented at the annual Hillman Awards ceremony in April 2025. The prizes are open to journalists globally, although the work must be intended for and widely accessible to a U.S. audience. This year, the prize was awarded to a pair of Globe and Mail reporters, Kathryn Blaze Baum and Grant Robertson, for their coverage of failures at the top of Canada’s food safety system that contributed to a listeria outbreak and avoidable deaths.
Established in 2007, the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize seeks short fiction of up to 3000 words themed loosely around the notion of travel. This year, the judges, Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh reviewed over 500 entries to select a shortlist of eight pieces. They then chose a winner, Annie Zhang for her story ‘Who Rattles the Night?’ and two runners-up. The winning story will be published in Overland and the two runners-up will be published online.
This prize, named after a former Petty Officer Radio Mechanic in the Royal Navy, is designed to encourage female engineering students to take the risks necessary to follow their passions. It is open to any female graduating student on the UHI BEng on any engineering programme, who can demonstrate a combination of academic achievement, personal attributes and contribution to student/society life.
This prize is in memory of a remarkable engineer who emigrated to Australia from Poland and Russia, trained as one of the first women Petty Officer Radio Mechanics, then worked on HMS Collingwood, as a Test Engineer for Pye’s new black and white television studio equipment, before a career as an Electronics Engineering Manager with Marconi maintaining the Arctic military listening stations. She later founded and chaired the Australian Society of Women in Engineering (Sydney Branch) and was a founding member of the Sydney Film Festival’s board of directors. The winner of the Sidney Black Memorial Engineering award will receive a mesmeric swirl design and gold-plated trophy, designed and handmade in Sydney by Dinosaur Designs for Sydney Film Festival.