Promoting sociology in Australia
Facilitating sociology teaching and research
Enhancing the professional development of TASA members

The Prize is to honour the work of Professor Raewyn Connell in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Australian Sociology. In particular, it honours her contribution to sociological theory and research, and her support and encouragement of sociologists at the beginning of their careers. On this basis, the Prize is intended to encourage and recognise the work of early career sociologists. It is awarded biennially, at the TASA Conference, to the best authored first monograph by an author within the discipline of Sociology. The Prize is funded equally by TASA and by a gift from Raewyn Connell.
Raewyn Connell is a former President and Vice-President of SAANZ, the predecessor of TASA. In 2007 she was the recipient of the TASA Distinguished Service Award for services to Sociology in Australia, and in 2008 her book Southern Theory was awarded the Stephen Crook Memorial Prize. Raewyn was one of the creators of the international field of research on men and masculinities. She was a recipient of the American Sociological Association’s award for distinguished contribution to the study of sex and gender, and was invited by United Nations agencies to lead international discussions of masculinities, violence and peacemaking, and the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality. She has also conducted influential research on educational inequality, class structure, and gender theory. A TASA survey of Australian sociologists in 2004 listed four of her books among the ten most influential in Australian Sociology.
You can read more about Raewyn Connell on her website.
The recipient of the Prize will receive:
The intention of the TASA Executive Committee in awarding this prize is to recognise members’ contributions to the discipline of sociology through publication of a monograph by a recognised publisher. The general criteria for eligibility are as follows:
2010: Peter Robinson - The Changing World of Gay Men . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008.
To collect primary data for The Changing World of Gay Men, I travelled the Hume, Newell, and Western highways and crossed Bass Strait between 2002 and 2005. I did so in order to interview a non-representative sample of 80 gay men from the capital cities of the south east and country towns and districts of New South Wales. The men I interviewed were aged between 20 and 79 and originally signed up to discuss what ageing meant to gay men. Because they revealed so much in their interviews about their life course and the struggle to assert themselves in a world dominated by heterosexual values, I changed my research project to an examination of the lives of three generations of gay men and the varying degree to which sexuality shaped their lives.
The full article is available in Nexus 23:1, February 2011.