Culture connections
by Michèle Nardelli
A week into her new role as UniSA Research Chair and Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, and Professor Elspeth Probyn had already had her first meeting with the Premier’s Council on Climate Change and the CRC for Sustainable Tourism.
It is an indicator of her broad interests and her belief in the important role of cultural understanding across the social and economic spectrum.
Prof Probyn (pictured) lives the notion of multidisciplinary research. She is happy to have many fingers in many different pies and has long-standing research interests in food, food cultures and the sociology of food and taste, body image, sexuality and gender, communities and identities and cultural economics.
"It is vital to have those researchers who plunge deeply into topics and have a forensic understanding of a subject, but it is equally important to build a research capacity that makes connections across disciplines," Prof Probyn said.
"I think UniSA offers the perfect combination of people working in empirical areas and in theoretical research across so many different fields including cultural studies, communications, marketing and tourism."
Moving to UniSA is opening new opportunities for her to explore a broader research agenda and build and lead new connections and ideas for research across disciplines.
"South Australia is fascinating because it has such a strong local identity," she says.
"It is a bit of an embodiment of what’s been coined a glocal place, which is where the global and local intertwine. Adelaide has a strong local identity (and a strong food/wine, lifestyle identity) but can operate from that base into a global context.
"In the past there were structures around how a city should interface with the world, a kind of national hierarchy – local to state, to regional to national and then international.
"Globalisation has changed that, and economically and culturally, cities can forge their own global relationships based on their local identity."
Throughout her career Prof Probyn has researched identities and the sociology of culture and how it impacts on what people do in their worlds – the way they live, the things they buy, the expectations they have of themselves and their society.
"I use culture and media as a kind of laboratory for thinking through different theoretical ideas. I think what sets apart the kind of research I’m interested in is discovering new ideas and grappling with them, but also always looking at the embodied, experiential, concrete instances of every day life," she said.
Her new research explores the cultural economics of the production and consumption of food, wine and tourism.
Ask her what she is hoping for in SA and the chance to explore will be high on her list, along with a core desire to build an environment of intellectual generosity.
"I want to be a part of and to help develop a collaborative, considerate research environment that fosters learning, exchange and growth," she said.
Prof Probyn established the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney in 1997, after a distinguished career as an academic and lecturer in Australia, Canada and the US.
A regular contributor to The Australian newspaper over seven years she has also published a number of academic books including Blush: Faces of Shame, and her latest Taste & Place.
She was elected as a Member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2002.