Grants and Writing Resources for University of Sydney

A record twelve University of Sydney students were selected as 2026 New Colombo Plan Scholars, studying arts, business, law, science, psychology and computing, with placements in Timor-Leste, Singapore, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia. Research students compete abroad as well. Sydney's 2026 Three Minute Thesis winner, from the Faculty of Science, finished runner-up at the Asia-Pacific final, one of eight finalists from 67 entrants.

Writing Prizes

Sydney's literary prizes have a long history, and many date back to bequests received at the beginning of the 20th century. The Wentworth Medal, for an essay of about 3,000 words, is open to every enrolled student and carries $20,000 with the medal. Undergraduates can enter the Henry Lawson Prize for Poetry and the Henry Lawson Prize for Prose ($2,500 each, the prose prize for a story or sketch on an Australian theme) and the Adrian Consett Stephen Memorial Prize for a short story or play ($1,500).

Longer essays have their own prizes. The Beauchamp Prize ($10,000) takes 5,000 to 7,500 words on a subject of literary or historical interest, and the Venour V Nathan Prize ($15,000) takes an essay of the same length on Australian or imperial history from students at any level. Recent graduates can still enter some of these within set time limits.

Funding for Research Students

The Postgraduate Research Support Scheme pays up to $3,500 a year toward research costs a faculty doesn't normally cover: presenting a paper or poster at a conference, fieldwork, specialist services, hard-to-find books, equipment, and in some cases thesis production. Doctoral students can receive it up to three times. Participation varies by school from round to round.

PhD students in Arts and Social Sciences whose primary research requires significant travel outside Sydney can apply to the Doctoral Research Travel Grant Scheme for up to $3,500; it doesn't fund conference trips. Students presenting or doing fieldwork abroad can browse the research overseas scholarships, and the full list, faculty schemes included, sits on the Graduate Research funding page.

Student Journals and the Repository

The Library's Sydney Open Journals platform is home to a number of scholarly journals supported by the Library, student titles among them. Upsurge: Student Political Economy Review is a blind-reviewed, open-access journal published by a student association based in the Social Sciences Building; it takes articles, reviews and lecture proceedings from students across universities and publishes online on a rolling basis.

Finished theses go into the Sydney eScholarship Repository. It holds more than 11,000 PhD theses and over 3,000 master's by research theses.

Help With Writing

The Learning Hub runs writing workshops and one-to-one consultations with advisers through the semester, plus a drop-in desk on Level 3 of Fisher Library on weekday afternoons. No appointment is needed for the desk. For research students, the Hub's longer workshops cover research writing, literature reviews and writing a thesis with publications, and the Library adds HDR sessions on publishing strategy and EndNote; both are listed under Graduate Research development opportunities.

If you'd like an editor's eye on a thesis chapter or a research paper before it goes out, we can help. See our University of Sydney dissertation and thesis editing and University of Sydney essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Write a Literature Essay: Mastering Close Reading
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis