Skip to content | Change text size
 

Two win Arts postgraduate prize

23 November 2005

Monash's Arts faculty has presented two postgraduate students with the Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Publication Prize.

Dr Adrian Schober.

This year's winners are Dr Adrian Schober for his book Possessed Child Narratives in Literature and Film published by Palgrave MacMillan, and Mr Simon Burgess for his paper 'The Newcomb Problem: an unqualified resolution', published in US-based philosophy journal Synthese (Volume 29). Each winner received a cheque for $1000.

A panel from the Arts Research Graduate School Committee comprising Monash Asia Institute director Professor Marika Vicziany and Dr Haripriya Rangan, senior lecturer and graduate coordinator, research, in the School of Geography and Environmental Science, selected the winners.

The prize is open to postgraduate students, nominated by their supervisor or school, who were published the previous year in a refereed scholarly journal, an authored book, book chapter or a refereed conference publication.

Dr Schober, who completed his PhD in 2003, said he was delighted with the prize. He was nominated by School of English, Communications and Performance Studies senior lecturer Dr Heather Scutter.

His book, which followed his doctorate thesis surveying narratives from films such as The Exorcist and The Omen, and books such as The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, has enjoyed considerable success in the US. He has recently completed postgraduate work at the University of Melbourne and hopes to pursue a career in academia.

"I loved my time at Monash and am glad my work has received such recognition," Dr Schober said. "Too often a doctoral thesis is forgotten. But none of this would have been possible without Heather Scutter's wonderful supervision."

Mr Burgess, who will complete his PhD on moral and political philosophy early in 2006, was nominated by his supervisor, School of Philosophy and Bioethics senior lecturer Dr Dirk Baltzly.

"Receiving the prize was quite a thrill," Mr Burgess said. "The Newcomb Problem raises some intriguing but very tricky issues in decision theory. I first heard about the problem when I was doing my undergraduate degree at Melbourne University and when I came to Monash to do honours, I wrote my thesis on it."

Mr Simon Burgess.

Arts faculty deputy dean and associate dean (graduate research) Associate Professor Denise Cuthbert said the prize was usually presented to one person, but this year two were awarded because of the outstanding quality of the publications.

"The works by Schober and Burgess were simply exceptional and were judged to have made a truly significant contribution to the respective fields of critical studies of children's literature and philosophy," Associate Professor Cuthbert said.

"In the case of Adrian Schober, it is a significant achievement for a recent candidate to have his thesis snapped up by a publisher as a book.

"With Simon Burgess, the journal his paper was published in is simply one of the top journals internationally in this field. This is a really significant achievement for a junior scholar, and his work was assessed by his referees as groundbreaking."

Associate Professor Cuthbert said the prize was one of a number of initiatives by the Arts Research Graduate School to support and reward student publications. This includes the Graduate Researchers in Print program designed to support higher degree by research candidates to commence and develop scholarly publications.