Society Fellow, Professor Warwick Anderson FRSN FAHA FASSA FAHMS, has been jointly awarded the Society for Social Studies of Science’s prestigious Bernal Prize for having made ‘distinguished contributions’ to the field of Science and Technology Studies. The Bernal Prize is the Society’s life achievement award, with past recipients including Emily Martin, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sheila Jasanoff, Steven Shapin, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Mary Douglas, Joseph Needham, Robert Merton, and Thomas Kuhn.

Warwick Anderson is the Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance, and Ethics in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney and the leader of the Politics, Governance, and Ethics Theme in the Charles Perkins Centre.  Beginning in the 1990s, Warwick Anderson has published path-breaking research on recent histories of science, medicine, environment, immunity, whiteness, and modernity.

The citation for his award notes that he “has been a major contributor to postcolonial science and technology studies through detailed studies of race, colonialism and citizenship, and in a series of profoundly influential programmatic works. Among his five award-winning monographs is The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen, which was honoured with the Fleck Prize in 2010. He has led multiple science and technology studies programs, mentored scores of now-prominent scholars and convened multiple workshops that have shaped the field, and also modelled interdisciplinary scholarship with scientists in diverse fields. His works have challenged Eurocentrism in science and technology studies, pushing the field to engage with global histories of science and medicine with a focus on Australasia, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. In the time of COVID-19 and in the midst of massive degradation of the Earth’s life-support systems, he is also recognised as a notably insightful and critical public intellectual.”

The Council of the Royal Society of NSW extends its warmest congratulations to Professor Warwick Anderson on this esteemed recognition of his outstanding research career. For further information, please see the announcement on the Society for Social Studies of Science website.