JUDITH BINNEY WRITING AWARD 2027
Dr Matthew Birchall
Empire for Sale: Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Making of Settler Capitalism
Dr Matthew Birchall is a Sydney-based historian and writer. He specialises in the intellectual and economic history of British settler colonialism, with a particular focus on Australia and New Zealand.
Matthew received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2022 as a Smuts Memorial International Scholar. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Auckland and UNSW Sydney, and in between, spent two years as a research fellow at The New Zealand Initiative in Wellington.
Matthew will use his Judith Binney Writing Award to complete his first book, a biography of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Wakefield was the most significant theorist of colonisation in the early nineteenth century, and among the most controversial. His ideas inspired the founding of South Australia and New Zealand and shaped policy across the empire’s settler colonies.
JUDITH BINNEY WRITING AWARD 2027
Samuel Day
The Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD ): A History of Pākehā Anti-Racism 1973 – 1986
Samuel Day graduated from Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington in 2023 with a MA in History. His thesis examined Pākehā pressure groups and Pacific issues in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1970s.
Since completing that thesis he has worked principally as a commissioned researcher for the New Zealand Defence Force, contributing to their research response for the Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 2500 Military Veterans Kaupapa Inquiry.
The Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD) was one of the pressure groups explored in Samuel’s MA thesis.
The Judith Binney Writing Award will allow him to prioritise research and writing in order to prepare a coherent and full historical analysis of ACORD, its campaigns, and how their impact informed ideas about race and social change circulating within New Zealand’s 1970s protest milieu.
JUDITH BINNEY WRITING AWARD 2027
Grace Lai
Handmade Histories: Aotearoa’s first craft cooperative and market.
Grace Lai is an art historian, researcher and curator in the field of contemporary craft focussed on uncovering stories held by objects overlooked or dismissed by conventional history.
Currently Curator at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum she is responsible for the development, exhibition and research of the Applied Arts and Design collection.
Drawing on oral history interviews, Grace will explore the history of Browns Mill Craft Market on Durham Lane in Tāmaki Makaurau, which emerged in 1968 as Aotearoa’s first craft cooperative and market.
The Judith Binney Writing Award will support the completion of a manuscript for publication, preserving information about an important site in Aotearoa’s art and urban history.
JUDITH BINNEY WRITING AWARD 2027
Chris Lipscombe
Bertram of China
For most of his career Chris Lipscombe has worked in marketing, information technology, publishing, and design. In 2004 he joined the regional economic development agency; Positively Wellington Business, helping local companies find business partners in China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. Over the following decade, Chris travelled frequently to China.
In 2016 Chris became a member of the New Zealand China Friendship Society and learned about the work of James Bertram—one of a small group of New Zealanders who had contributed to the rise of China in the turbulent years leading up to the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
James Bertram had written four books about his time in China and a memoir, but a biography of the man and his work, including his significant contribution to New Zealand literature and literary criticism, didn’t exist. Chris decided he would write one.
Chris will use his Judith Binney Writing Award to complete his research into unpublished papers and correspondence of James Bertram, and his friends, and write a first draft of the biography. Chris has tertiary qualifications in history, marketing and international relations and since 2025 has been a visiting scholar at the Stout Research Centre, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
JUDITH BINNEY WRITING AWARD 2027
Dr Lori Leigh
Home Sweet Homo: The History of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Queer Homes
Dr Lori Leigh is an interdisciplinary researcher, writer, artist and educator whose work spans queer history, public health, and creative practice. They are currently a Research Fellow at the University of Otago, Wellington.
Since moving into public health research, Dr Leigh has expanded their work in queer health, wellbeing and history. As a Board Trustee of Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa, Dr Leigh contributes to the preservation and promotion of Aotearoa’s queer histories.
Dr Leigh will use the 2027 Judith Binney Writing Award to advance work exploring how queer individuals, couples and communities have created homes as spaces of romance, refuge, resistance, care and belonging. Bringing together oral histories, archival research and visual culture, it examines shared flats, collective households, chosen families and other domestic spaces across urban and rural Aotearoa.
Dr Leigh says the award allows dedicated time needed to bring together years of archival research, oral histories and community engagement, to preserve stories at risk of being lost, and to complete their book.