From: Amanda Lawson Subject: [Lha_all] Sue Rowley Date: 7 September 2016 10:46:14 am AEST
Dear colleagues
With great sadness, I write to let you know that Emeritus Professor Sue Rowley died last Saturday, as a result of advanced cancer.
Sue came to Wollongong university with her partner, Jim Falk, in 1980 and became, over the next 15 years, a committed and influential member of Creative Arts staff. Her work on creative practice as research was particularly significant, consolidating our position as a national leader in the field, shaping the structure and understanding of our creative higher degrees and contributing to national policy. Of equal impact was her own research, as well as the work she undertook on the visual arts curriculum, teaching, supervision and international projects. We greatly appreciated her insights and advice years later, during the review of the BCA in 2010. Sue went on to become professor of contemporary art theory at COFA, UNSW, then executive director of Humanities and Creative Arts at the ARC and associate dean (research) at UTS, where she was instrumental in founding the Creative Industries Innovation Centre. In recent years, having retired from UTS, she consulted in creative industries and university-based research and in 2014 she undertook a major review of LHA's research profile and support structures – many of you will have met her at that time.
Throughout her career, family and friends remained central in Sue's life; she and Jim had two children, Anna and Michael, and a grandchild, Jessie, and in retirement lived close to them in Melbourne. She was an exceptional colleague, mentor and friend to many people, over many years, both in the academy and in the arts. I know at least one person in the faculty who first encountered her as a popular, memorable lecturer at Prahan in the 1970s, others have had enduring friendships or have come to know her as a colleague through one of the many different roles she had in the university sector. Personally, I knew Sue for close to 30 years and I'll never forget her intelligent approach, her calm presence and her warm optimism.
A Celebration of her Life will be held in Melbourne this Friday – details of this and the notice of her death in today's Sydney Morning Herald can be found here: http://tributes.smh.com.au/obituaries/smh-au/obituary.aspx?n=sue-rowley&pid=181306081
Kind regards Amanda