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By Fran Martin, with thanks to Meaghan Morris

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Elspeth’s connections with the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies project are perhaps not widely known outside the networks directly involved, but they are nonetheless deep and consequential. Elspeth is linked with Inter-Asia not through publicly visible institutional-level affiliations or an Asia specialization in her own research, but through less formal webs of human and intellectual connection: through her generous and impactful mentoring relationships with generations of international graduate students; the deep resonance of her works on gender, sexuality, affect, food and environmental humanities for many scholars in the Inter-Asia community; and the human-level connections that link the Gender and Cultural Studies program at the University of Sydney with the development of cultural studies in Asia.

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In early 2007, Elspeth visited Lingnan University to participate in a workshop on “Bodies and Urban Spaces” (the photo above with Meaghan Morris, then founding Chair Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan, was taken at that event). The day’s program is a veritable who’s-who of Sinosphere queer studies, including figures like Travis Kong, Denise Tang, Siu Leung Li, Lucetta Kam, Natalia Chan, Lucifer Hung and Yau Ching, who went on to become founding luminaries in the field. Elspeth’s visit occurred early in the development of Sydney’s MCS program, and she discussed with Lingnan colleagues the rationale behind the MCS that had been introduced in Lingnan’s Department of Cultural Studies in 2003. Thoroughly investigating the workings of that program, Elspeth concluded that its model wouldn’t work in Sydney, but this prompted her to think concretely about what would. In quite a concrete sense, then, Sydney’s MCS has an Inter-Asia origin, with Elspeth’s role instrumental in that development.

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Sydney University’s Master of Cultural Studies (MCS), which Elspeth convened from 2018–2020, has since its inception attracted a large number of international students from Asian countries. Elspeth taught the popular “Gender in Cultural Theory” subject in the MCS for many years, and took a keen interest in developing a pedagogy that would work for students from diverse backgrounds learning alongside local Australian students, where neither group had much initial training in either Cultural Studies or Gender Studies.

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The personal and intellectual impacts of Elspeth’s supervisory relationships with her international PhD students are beautifully captured in the tributes below from Daren Shi-Chi Leung and Dongyang Li. These two are only the latest in a long list of PhDs Elspeth supervised from China and the wider region. From the perspective of Elspeth’s own later development into environmental humanities, it’s significant that as early as 2012-2015 she enthusiastically supervised a thesis by Rany Pen called “White Gold: A Study of Gender Relations in Rural Cambodia,” awarded in 2016. Daren’s and Dongyang’s testimonies vividly illustrate that she was much more than simply a PhD supervisor: she was an intellectual inspiration, an emotional support, and a dedicated advocate who not only launched them into research careers but profoundly affected their lives and understanding of the world on a human level. Elspeth also served as a PhD examiner for several Inter-Asia-related theses––my own included––and has been an energetic, career-long mentor for those she supervised and whose work she examined.

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The Inter-Asia community has been shocked and deeply saddened by Elspeth’s sudden passing. Vale EP: friend, mentor, colleague, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes Inter-Asia champion.

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A celebration of Elspeth’s life and work is being organised by the School of Humanities of the University of Sydney, including an option to join via Zoom. More information about this can be found here.

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