The Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) has announced the winners of several of its 2016 awards. The list of prizes and winners is below. But first, notice that the AAP issues an award to non-philosophers: its Media Professionals’ Award. 

The award, which includes a $500 prize, is “open to media professionals including journalists, presenters, producers, editors and others” based in Australasia. Winners are chosen on the following criteria:

1. The primary criterion is the ability of the activity, episode or piece to engage the interest of the general public in philosophy or some philosophical issue.
2. In addition, the philosophy should be of acceptable quality, sufficient to justify the implicit AAP endorsement of quality conveyed by the prize.
3. Consideration should also be given to the size of the audience reached.

I think this is an excellent idea.

This year’s winners of the Media Professionals’ Award are Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly for their radio show, “The Minefield.” More details about the award are here.

Other awards announced by the AAP include:

• Annette Baier Prize (for an outstanding philosophical paper or book chapter published by an Australasian woman during the previous calendar year): Monima Chadha (Monash) for her “Time-Series of Ephemeral Impressions: The Abhidharma-Buddhist View of Conscious Experience,” in Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences
• Australasian Journal of Philosophy Best Paper Award: Boris Hennig (Ryerson) for his “Instance is the Converse of Aspect“
• AAP Media Prize (for the best philosophical piece published by a professional philosopher in the popular media in Australasia during the previous calendar year): Matthew Beard (UNSW Australia)
• Prize for Innovation in Inclusive Curricula (to encourage professionals developing and improving their teaching portfolios to consider critically how philosophy is presented, and to be innovative in implementing practices of teaching that off-set well-known disparities of participation in the discipline, for instance along race and gender lines): Ruth Boeker (Melbourne)

The AAP’s Postgraduate Presentation Prize does not appear to have been awarded yet, but you can see its shortlist here.

UPDATE (7/8/16): Courtesy of our commenters, we learn that the Postgraduate Presentation Prize was awarded to Stephen Gadsby (Macquarie University) for his “Anorexia Nervosa and the Oversized Experience.”