Dawson shared the Grand Prix in the First International High-tec Art Biennale, ARTEC, Nagoya, Japan (1989),and the 1989 Shearwater Foundation Award (New York) for excellence in Holograhic Art. In 1993 Dawson’s artwork was acknowledged nationally with a four-year Australian Artist Creative Fellowship awarded by the Prime Minister in recognition of her outstanding artistic contribution to the nation.
Leading scientific organisations including the Laboratoire de Physique et Optique in Besancon, France, RMIT, Melbourne, and the CSIRO National Measurement Laboratory, Sydney, have awarded Dawson artists residencies extended over several years. Artist run groups such as the Holocentre in New York, and ANAT, Adelaide have also awarded Dawson residencies.
Dawson was made a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and was invited to return as a visiting scholar in 2002/3 to undertake hologram projects. Dawson’s PhD on The Concrete Holographic Image was undertaken at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
Currently Dawson is lead CI for Linkage Project LP0883884, a four-year project with a team of three investigators and four industry partners from Sweden, the UK, Lithuania and Australia and lead CI for Discovery Project DP1094613, a five year project commencing in 2011.