Professor Sharyn Pearce

Biography

Sharyn Pearce is the Discipline Leader of Creative Writing and Literary Studies in Portfolio One (Drama / Film and TV / Creative Writing and Literary Studies) in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. Her PhD - a study of Australian and American literature of the Depression era - was completed at James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia, in 1988. She has an international reputation in youth and children's writing and an extensive publication record in that area, including the award-winning Youth Cultures: Texts, Images and Identities (Praeger, 2002), which was co-edited with Kerry Mallan. She is on the editorial board of Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, and is a past Queensland board member of the May Gibbs Children's Literature Trust and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
In 2007-2008 she was a Faculty Teaching Fellow and was responsible for implementing a faculty-wide peer-partnering teaching program. In 2008 she won national recognition when the Australian Learning and Teaching Council awarded her a Citation for an Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, based upon her innovative leadership in the area of literary studies, and her establishment of peer-partnering and peer-mentoring processes within the Creative Industries faculty.