American honour for author
Flinders graduate and academic status holder Gay Lynch (PhD(EHLT) ’09) was recently awarded the 2024 AAALS (American Association of Australasian Literary Studies) prize for creative prose. Her story, ‘Hebe’s Lament’, is about the Women’s March for Justice on 4 March 2021, and its relationship with a male train suicide the same day. The winning story will be published in the next issue of Antipodes.
Gay works as an adjunct academic at Flinders University, publishing essays, hybrid memoir pieces, novels, papers and short stories. Her works include Unsettled (2019), an Australian frontier novel, plus essays and stories published in Best Australian Stories, Bluestem Journal, Edições Humus Limitada, Glimmer Press, Island, Meanjin, Meniscus, Griffith Review and Westerly. She recently contributed three works of prose to The Writing Mind: Creative Writing Responses to Images of the Living Brain. This book includes 60 creatively-enhanced, colour images of the living brain. Each image is followed by two short-form creative writing responses: prose and poetry written as ekphrastic ‘replies’ to the images.
Expert addition to NZ eyewitness inquiry
Matthew Flinders Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Psychology Neil Brewer has been appointed to an expert advisory panel for a large Systemic Inquiry in New Zealand, which will continue through 2024-25. Since 2021 Professor Brewer has been assisting the Criminal Cases Review Commission (New Zealand) in the area of eyewitness identification. The Commission, which has been operating for four years, recently initiated a Systemic Inquiry into Eyewitness Identification Evidence, following issues that have emerged in several cases, and has asked Professor Brewer to be part of the expert panel. More details on the CCRC-NZ inquiry can be obtained via this link.
Health advances recognised by Indian awards
Dr Manasi Murthy Mittinty from the College of Medicine and Public Health has been presented with the 2024 Gargi Award for Science and Research by the Hindu Council of Australia, acknowledging her contributions to chronic pain and mental health in under-represented communities. This success comes soon after Dr Mittinty also received India’s highest Diasporic “Hind Rattan-Jewel of India-2024” award at the 75th Indian Republic Day in Delhi. This award celebrates non-resident Indians living overseas for upholding the “flag of India high”.