Professor Elizabeth Nora McMahon

Dr Elizabeth McMahon is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media.  Her research interests are in Australian literature, Island Studies and Gender studies.

Her recent monograph, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (New York and London: Anthem, 2016) is the culmination of research funded by an ARC Discovery grant titled Our Island Home: The Shifting Map of Australian Literature. It won the 2017 Walter McRae Russell Award for the best work of literary criticism on an Australian subject published within the previous 2 calendar years; and the inaugural (2017) Australian University Heads of English Prize for Literary Scholarship.  

She has also published widely on the representation of gender and sexuality in Australian writing and is currently completing a monograph titled Transvestite Frontiers to be published by University of Sydney Press in 2020. With Dr Brigitta Olubas, she has edited series of collected critical essays, most recently on Australian author Elizabeth Harrower (University of Sydney Press) and a forthcoming collection on writer Antigone Kefala (University of Western Australia Press 2019).

Since 2008 she has co-edited Southerly, Australian oldest literary journal, and co-edits a book series titled Rethinking the Island for Rowman and Littlefield International.