The NUS Singapore History Prize, a new competition launched this year by the Department of History at NUS, aims to encourage engagement with history in its broadest sense. In addition to promoting studies of pre-1819 Singapore, the prize seeks to make its themes more accessible to non-academic audiences by casting a wider net for works that deal with history.
The winner will receive a cash prize of S$60,000 and a commissioned trophy. The shortlisted works will also receive a cash prize of S$20,000 each, and will be showcased at the NUS History Prize 2021 launch event in April next year. The event will be a chance for the public to hear from the authors on their work and what it means to them.
NUS’s first history prize was awarded in 1969 and was then called the Singapore Sweep, and the cost of each ticket was $1. It contributed $14 million to the construction of Singapore’s first National Stadium over a period of a few years, and was one of the most successful fundraising campaigns for a national project in our history.
This time around, the prize will be open to non-fiction and fiction works published between January 2017 and May 30 this year. The prize will be judged by a five-member jury panel, led by Prof Mahbubani and Prof Miksic, which will include arts and literary figures, historians, museum curators and history teachers and curriculum developers.
The jury will be assisted by a Nominating Committee of five members, including academics from the NUS Department of History and representatives of organisations that engage with history in their work. The committee will be tasked with selecting three nominees for each of the categories, and in the case of the Grand Prize, to identify the overall winner.
The award ceremony will be accompanied by a series of events as part of Earthshot Week, which will see global leaders, businesses and investors come to Singapore to explore opportunities with the winners and finalists. In addition, the public will be invited to experience local activations centered on the 2023 cohort of Earthshot solutions.