The Magic Lantern Society is proud to support original work on the magic lantern, lantern slides and optical projection, by offering two annual awards.
The awards are named in memory of Mervyn Heard and Dick Balzer, two internationally respected scholars, collectors and performers noted for their openness to new ideas and new ways of working.
Awards homepage Dick Balzer Award 2025 Mervyn Heard Award 2025
Past winners of the Awards
| Each year below is linked to the announcement of the winners in The Magic Lantern, which gives a bit more detail of the projects. | |||
| 2024 | Mervyn Heard Award | Winner: | Karen McAulay, a researcher of Scottish national music, to develop her research on the Glasgow publishers Bayley & Ferguson and their Services of Song with magic lantern slides. |
| Dick Balzer Award | Winner: | Tonnvane Wiswell for her proposed adaptation of Call of Cthulhu, a short story by the American writer H.P. Lovecraft using a mix of old, repurposed and newly-commissioned slides. | |
| 2023 | Mervyn Heard Award | Winner: | Sandra Lawrence for her research on the horticulturalist Ellen Willmott, focusing on a cache of Willmott’s lantern slides held by the Museum of History of Science, Oxford. |
| Special Commendations (2): | Elizabeth Grimshaw Dick Moore |
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| Dick Balzer Award | Winner: | Melissa Ferrari for Relict: a Phantasmagoria, an experimental documentary combining handmade lantern slides, digital projection, pre-recorded audio and a fog machine. | |
| Special Commendation: | Edward Murray | ||
| 2022 | Mervyn Heard Award | Winner: | Miguel Herrero Herrero to catalogue his collection online, and to create audiovisual presentations which can be used in future shows, combining research, artistic practice and archival collecting. |
| Dick Balzer Award | Winner: | The Annet Duller Troupers to develop the performance of Turbulent Times 1770-1820 – a special show following the highs and lows of the upper crust of Dutch society in a tempestuous era. | |
| 2021 | Mervyn Heard Award | Winner: | Miguel Herrero Herrero for an amazing body of research including the first Spanish translation of Etienne-Gaspard Robertson’s complete works, a monograph on the art of raising ghosts and an animated documentary film. |
| Special Commendation: | Roger Gonin | ||
| Dick Balzer Award | Winner: | Elisa Seghers, Ditmar Bollaert, Diederik Peeters, Luc Poppe and Nikolaas Martens for The House of Mysteries, an ‘experiential theatre’ event featuring a ghost-raising lantern performance, an installation inspired by Pepper’s Ghost, and an accompanying exhibition. | |
| Special Commendation: | Nettie Edwards | ||
| 2020 | Mervyn Heard Award | Winners (2): | Samuel Grosdemange for The Magic Lantern 3D Virtual Museum and Theater, a
virtual theatre that can be used for magic lantern performances and exhibitions of artefacts as 3D models. Jeltsje Stobbe, Rosa Deen and Margriet van der Waal, for their work on researching and analysing a collection of lantern slides at the Zuid-Afrikahuis in Amsterdam. |
| Special Commendation: | Stephen Bottomore | ||
| Dick Balzer Award | Winner: | Dawn Elliott and Joel Schlemowitz for Phantasmagoria – an ambitious proposal featuring hand-painted slides, a hand-crafted Fantascope, opaque projection, shadowplay, narration, live effects and music. | |
| Special Commendations (2): | Laura Minici Zotti Martyn Jolly, Elisa DeCourcy and Alexander Hunter |
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| 2019 | Mervyn Heard Award | Winner: | Yana Agafonova for her research on public readings with magic lanterns in late Imperial Russia, a country that is still somewhat under-explored in magic lantern research. |
| Special Commendations (2): | Márcia Vilarigues, Ângela Santos,
Vanessa Otero and Beatriz Rodrigues Peter Domankiewicz |
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| Dick Balzer Award | Winner: | Oona Libens for Soma, a journey into the interior of the human body, featuring different kinds of projector, multiple layers of screens and mechanical effects. | |
| Special Commendations (2): | Nicole Mollet Pippa Stacey |
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