Stephen Wurm Graduate Prize for Pacific Linguistic Studies

The objective/s of the prize are to acknowledge outstanding field-based research on one or more languages of the Pacific/Asia region, with a preference for work focussed on Oceania in its broadest sense.

The value of the prize/s awarded is $1200.

The prize will be on offer annually.

Funding for this prize has been provided by The Stephen and Helen Wurm Endowment. Professor Stephen Wurm was the inaugural Professor of Linguistics in what was then the Research School of Pacific and Asia Studies, and his wife Dr Helen Groger-Wurm was a prominent anthropologist of art.
Professor Wurm carried out wide-ranging research on the languages of the southwestern Pacific, especially in Papua New Guinea, but also did work on Australian Aboriginal languages. He laid the foundations for much of what we now know about Papuan languages. He also founded the ANU-based monograph series Pacific Linguistics, the world's most extensive series of linguistic monographs. In their wills they expressed the wish that the Stephen and Helen Wurm Endowment be used to further the cause of research on languages of the Pacific.