Elizabeth Smyth

Elizabeth Smyth's research is grounded in literary representations of place and human-plant relationships.

Her primary aims are to strengthen the presence of the Wet Tropics Bioregion in Australia's literary imaginary and to investigate how this globally-significant ecosystem influences written creative expression.

As Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australian Literature, at the Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative Writing, she engages with Ecocriticism, Georgic Studies, storytelling by Indigenous Australians, and transnational comparative analysis to develop new understandings of Australian literature. 

In 2026, Elizabeth visited Washington DC as a Queensland-Smithsonian Fellow to examine representations of tropical forests in nineteenth century writing by explorers of North Queensland and the Congo.

Previously, Elizabeth worked as a research assistant on the 'To Be Continued' National Newspaper Fiction Database, an ARC-funded project administered by the Australian National University.

To support her creative-practice research, Elizabeth writes fiction and creative non-fiction to explore literary responses to life in the Australian Wet Tropics. A recent work of creative non-fiction "The Long Sentence" appears in the ROAM: Representations of Home Creative Journal, University of Lisbon, and her fiction "Alone Together" in Australia's iconic journal for creative writing, Meanjin.

Georgic Studies

Australian Farm Novel

Ecocriticism

Creative-Practice Research

Literary Representations of the Wet Tropics