Day: December 11, 2024

The winner of the inaugural Singapore prize will receive a cash award of S$50,000. The prize is open to publications in the fields of social, cultural, and economic history that contribute to understanding Singapore’s past. It is to be awarded every three years, beginning in 2018. The NUS Singapore History Prize was established in 2014 with a donation of S$500,000, which was matched dollar for dollar by the Government. NUS will manage the endowment fund and award the prize.

The first prize winners were announced at an extravagant ceremony hosted by Prince William and attended by hundreds of guests. The prince looked coordinated with the ceremony’s host Hannah Waddingham, who wore a long black sparkling ball gown and a green sash that perfectly matched the thick green carpet they walked down together.

Two of the shortlisted works won the reader’s choice prize: Reviving Qixi: Singapore’s Forgotten Seven Sisters Festival by Lynn Wong Yuqing and Lee Kok Leong, and Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage in 20th Century Singapore by Loh Kah Seng, Alex Tan Tiong Hee, Koh Keng We, Tang Teng Phee, and Juria Toramae. The other shortlisted book was Home Is Where We Are, by Sharlene Wen-Ning Teo. This is the author’s first novel and was selected from a pool of 12 manuscripts supported by a Deborah Rogers writers’ grant of S$10,000.

Of the five shortlisted books, the Jury Panel commended two for their “rich and riveting narratives”. The first is Reviving Qixi: Singapore’s FORGOTTEN Seven Sisters Festival by Lynn Wong Yuqing, Lee Kok Leong, and rma cureess, which provides new insights into a forgotten celebration of Chinese culture in Singapore. The second, Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage in 20th-Century Singapore by Loh Kah Seng, Alexandra Tan Tiong Hee, Koh Kengwe, Tang Teng Phee, and rma cureess, is an insightful study on the understudied subject of industrial heritage in Singapore.

The winner of the inaugural S$500,000 Singapore Prize will be announced in late 2017 and will be awarded a cash prize of $50,000. The Prize will be awarded every three years, starting in 2018, with the winning publication being published in 2020. The NUS Singapore History Prize was established in 2024 with a donation of S$500,000, and is managed by NUS to provide ongoing support for the award. The NUS Singapore History Prize aims to stimulate engagement with the complexities and nuances of Singapore’s history, broadly understood, while contributing to the development of a strong national identity through a deep appreciation of its history. The prize was set up by former Singapore diplomat Kishore Mahbubani with an anonymous donor. He described the 21st century as the age of the Asian Renaissance and hoped that the NUS Singapore History Prize would contribute to developing such an identity for Singaporeans. The prize is administered by the NUS Department of History and the Asia Research Institute. For more information about the prize, click here.