Lucy Mackintosh’s Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland has received a Highly Commended award from the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network in its inaugural Public Environmental History Prize.
The prize is awarded biennially to recognise outstanding work in public engagement on topics in the environmental history of Australia and/or Aotearoa New Zealand.
The judges noted that:
[Lucy Mackintosh] demonstrates not only what was present at various times in the past but how and why these earlier material histories were overlaid or destroyed physically and culturally.
Identifying and explaining this physical and narrative erasure are major contributions to an understanding of the interactions of the human and physical world of Auckland, before and after colonisation.
These achievements mean that her beautifully produced book (thanks once again to Bridget Williams Books) is the best history of Auckland so far published. It is also the deepest history of any part of Aotearoa written by an environmental historian rather than a geologist or archaeologist.
Lucy Mackintosh will deliver the 2022 Michael King Memorial Lecture at this year’s Auckland Writers Festival.