The Ken Provins Award is awarded annually for the best paper presented during the Society’s Annual Conference for the year of the Award.

• Awarded to individual or joint authorship, but not for a keynote speaker.
• The Award is based on both the written paper and the oral presentation at the conference.
• The Award is in the form of a Certificate for each author.

Past recipients

2000 Robin Burgess-Limerick
2001 Stephen Ward
2002 Leon Straker, Andrew Briggs and Alison Greig
2003 Jennifer Long and Carmen Sui
2004 Mark Hennessy
2005 Not awarded
2006 Not awarded
2007 Sonia Ranelli, Leon Straker and Anne Smith
2008 Melissa Baysari, Carlo Caponeccia and Andrew S McIntosh
2009 Not awarded
2010 Elise Crawford, Yvonne Toft and Ryan L Kift
2011 Daisy Veitch, Rachel Dawson, Harry Owen and Christopher Leigh
2012 Not awarded
2013 Lily Hirsch
2014 Not awarded
2015 Not awarded
2016 Not awarded
2017 Anjum Naweed and Janine Chapman
2018 Peter Schumacher
2019 Clare Dallat

About Ken Provins (1923-2013)

Ken Provins was educated at Wimbledon C.S., Brasenose College, Oxford in BA (Hons, Psychology & Physiology), MA (Oxon), and PhD (Reading). He completed War Service 1942-1946 in the Royal Air Force as a Pilot and Flying Instructor.

Ken was a member of the Physiological Research Unit at Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough in 1949-1952, and member of the Medical Research Unit at Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough in 1952-1962.

He was a Reader in Psychology at University of Adelaide in 1962-1968, then a Professor of Psychology at the Australian National University in 1968-1975. Ken was then the
Deputy Vice-chancellor at University of Adelaide in 1975-1980, and University Professor until his retirement in 1983. He was appointed as an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at University of Adelaide (Emeritus Professor) until moving to Brisbane in 1989. Ken then worked as an Honorary Research Consultant at University of Queensland in 1990-1999.

Ken was the organiser for the first Ergonomics Conference in Adelaide in 1964 and Secretary of the Steering Committee leading to the formation of the Ergonomics Society of Australia and New Zealand in 1966. He was elected to be one of the first four Fellows of the Society and served as the President in 1968-1970.