Terry Flew writes the following, “The late Christopher Newell has been one of Australia’s leading thinkers and activists around issues related to communications access, particularly with reference to disability, and to social justice questions more generally. He had been an active contributor to many AANZCA conferences, and in both his individual work and in collaboration with authors such as Gerard Goggin, a pioneer in publishing on disability and communication” (MIA, AANZCA President’s Report 2009).
He also researched and published extensively in fields such as medical ethics, spirituality, pastoral theology and bioethics, and was awarded the Order of Australia in 2001 “for service to people with disabilities, particularly through advocacy and research, to the development and practice of ethics and to health consumers.” He was awarded the Australian College of Educators highest award, the College Medal, in 2008.
He was a regular participant in AANZCA conferences and associated journals, and was a pioneer in establishing disability and communication research in Australia. He was the author, with Gerard Goggin, of Digital disability: the social construction of disability in new media (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and Disability in Australia: exposing a social apartheid (UNSW Press, 2005).
This prize both commemorates Christopher Newell’s contribution to the field of disability and communication research, and aims to advance research and scholarship in this field. The prize will be awarded annually to the best paper dealing with matters relating to disability and communication, or to questions of equity, diversity and social justice as they pertain to communication, that is submitted as a refereed paper to the AANZCA conference.
The panel judging the prizes will consist of the President of AANZCA, the Vice-President of AANZCA (typically the chief conference organiser for that year), and a person seconded by the President to judge on the basis of their expertise in the field. This panel will have completed its deliberations prior to the conference, and the prize will be awarded at the conference. Members of Christopher Newell’s family will be advised of the winning paper, and may be asked to contribute where appropriate to the selection process.
Previous Recipients
2009 – Kate Holland (University of Canberra), ‘Suicide and the Media: Identifying Some Blind Spots’
2010 – Elspeth Tilley and Tyron Love (Massey University), ‘Learning from Kaupapa Māori: Issues and Techniques for Engagement’
2011 – Frank Sligo (Massey University), ‘“Although they are looking at the words, they are not actually reading”: Apprentices’ liminal literacy and literacy tutors’ dilemmas’
2012 – Holly Reid and Kerry McCallum, default’“Weighing in”: The Australian’s reporting of child abuse in Northern Territory Indigenous Communities’
2013 – Not awarded
2014 – Katie Ellis, “Disability in the Buffyverse: Fanfic, cliff notes and the digital novelisation of television”
2015 – Elizabeth Gray, Kane Hopkins and Christine Kirkwood, “Readable, audible, navigable: accessible communication for the non-profit health sector”. Published in Communication Research and Practice, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/22041451.2015.1095150
2016 – Ramaswami Harindranath, “Multiculturalism, interculturalism and communicating: negotiating diversity and complexity.”
2017 – Tanja Dreher and Cate Thill, “Disability, listening and media justice” (The authors donated their prize to the First People’s Disabilty Network.)
2018 – Not awarded
2019 – Not awarded
2020 – Not awarded
2021 – Stephanie Mantilla, University of Sydney. ‘Exploring #InvisibleDisability on Instagram’
2022 – Souleymane Coulibaly, Queensland University of Technology. ‘Exploring health misinformation on WhatsApp within the African migrant and refugee community in Southeast Queensland (SEQ)’
2023 – Dr Ashleigh Haw, Deakin University. ‘Centring embodied knowledge to foster accessible crisis communication in multicultural Australia: Lessons from Covid-19′