Rate My Professor Vanessa Smith

Professor Vanessa Smith holds the position of Professor of English at the University of Sydney, affiliated with the Discipline of English and Writing in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She earned her BA from the University of Sydney and PhD from the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA). Smith's research specializations encompass novel theory, psychoanalysis and literature, memory and memoir, and intercultural encounters, with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century literature, Pacific textual histories, and island studies. Her scholarship examines textual exchanges, friendship dynamics, and narrative representations of childhood in historical literary contexts.

Throughout her career, Smith has held significant appointments, including ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellow from 2002 to 2007. She served as Head of the School of Literature, Art and Media in 2015 and 2017, Research Director for Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2016, and has been School Research Coordinator for English and Writing since 2019. As founder of the Novel Network at the University of Sydney, she fosters interdisciplinary dialogue on narrative forms. Her major publications include Literary Culture and the Pacific: Nineteenth-Century Textual Encounters (Cambridge University Press, 1998), which analyzes 19th-century literary engagements with the Pacific; Intimate Strangers: Friendship, Exchange and Pacific Encounters (Cambridge University Press, 2010), exploring interpersonal and cultural exchanges in Pacific settings; and Toy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Fordham University Press, 2023), investigating child figures and toys as narrative devices. She has also authored or edited inaugural works in island studies and contributed to monographs on psychoanalytic approaches to literature. Recognized for her contributions, Smith received the ARC QEII Fellowship and was elected FAHA in 2018, underscoring her impact on literary studies, postcolonial theory, and narrative analysis within the academic field.