An international project team directed by Centre for Early Modern Studies Director Professor Rosalind L. Smith, and including Professor Mitchell Whitelaw from ANU School of Art and Design, won the Renaissance Society of America Digital Innovation Award on February 17, 2022 for their Early Modern Women and the Poetry of Complaint project. 

The team were award mainly on account of their gorgeous, ground-breaking digital index, the Early Modern Women’s Complaint Poetry Index.
A first and last line index of female-authored complaint poetry in English and Scots from the period 1530 to 1680, it presents the data set from a wider project exploring, for the first time, how early modern women used the poetry of complaint for expressions of love, loss and protest. Explore the index here.
This work was part of an ARC and Marsden funded Discovery Project.

The Renaissance Society of America's Digital Innovation Award recognizes excellence in digital projects that support the study of the Renaissance. This year two prizes were awarded, to Early Modern Women and the Poetry of Complaint, 1540-1660, a project directed by Rosalind L. Smith (Department of English, The Australian National University), and to Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France, a project directed by Pamela H. Smith (Department of History, Columbia University).

The Renaissance Society of America is the largest international organization devoted to the critical study of the world from 1300–1700 and its importance today.The RSA fosters initiatives that feature innovative, multidisciplinary research and pedagogical approaches together with well-established methodologies. It sponsors digital and print publications to disseminate knowledge, organizes in-person and virtual events to bring together diverse communities of inquiry and practice, and promotes the works of its members in the field of Renaissance Studies.