Remembering Anne E. McLaren (23 July 1952-6 March 2026):
Scholar, Teacher, and Advocate for Chinese Studies in Australia
Jonathan Benney, Emily Dunn, Louise Edwards, and Lewis Mayo
Anne Elizabeth McLaren was born on 23 July 1952 in Sydney, the first of seven children born to Dr Keith and Betty McLaren. Her childhood combined an eclectic range of influences. Her parents were devout Catholics and she was raised strictly in that tradition, but she came of age in a period of global cultural upheaval. Her father was also a scientist whose work took him across the world, so that the young Anne spent time in Cambridge as well as suburban Sydney. Anne was academically minded from an early age, and when she graduated from her convent school, she was rewarded for her high marks with a National University Scholarship for the Australian National University which required her to major in an Asian language. Anne spent ten years at the ANU, gaining a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in Classical Chinese in 1976 and a PhD in Chinese Literature in 1981. During her studies she spent time in Taiwan and mainland China. The time she spent at Fudan University, Shanghai, in 1978 and 1979, at the beginning of the “reform and opening up” period and at the time of contentious experiments with democratisation, influenced her deeply.
Anne was an outstanding scholar with an international reputation that reached across Chinese oral performance traditions, print culture, heritage and gender from Ming and Qing China through to the contemporary era. Anne was a prolific scholar, producing eight books and dozens of articles in leading journals. She was among the very first scholars internationally to combine research on Chinese literature and performance with environmental and heritage studies. Her work revealed how knowledge of ancient popular traditions is crucial to understanding China today. Her 2025 article ‘Creating Myth in the Regions’ examined one of China’s most prominent mythical narratives connected to flood management and showcased her expertise in analysing sources as diverse as classical Chinese texts, visual arts, temples and landscapes as she revealed how popular culture connects to longstanding systems of governance. Her 2008 book Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China,based on extensive fieldwork and collaboration with scholars in China, is a meticulous documentation of marriage practices that is prized by anthropologists and performance culture scholars alike. She was part of the international teams that brought a unique and largely forgotten Chinese ‘women’s script’ (nüshu) to global attention. Anne’s dextrous interweaving of diverse intellectual threads and interdisciplinary methodologies produced a body of scholarship that will remain influential for years to come. Her collaborative approach to research forged a rich array of professional bonds that reached around the world and there is an extensive list of scholars and students who are both admirers of her work and grateful recipients of her advice and care.
The respect she garnered is evident in her appointment to numerous international journal editorial boards including Asian Ethnology, Nan Nu: Men, Women and Gender in China, and CHINOPERL-Chinese Oral and Performing Literature. She also served on the Editorial Board for the ASAA’s Women in Asia book series. In each of these roles, Anne’s service was marked by her generosity in providing considered and informed feedback in a timely fashion. It has ensured that generations of scholars have benefited from her deep knowledge across diverse fields. She was a stalwart supporter of women in Asian Studies and Chinese Studies and served as a long-standing editor of the Women’s Caucus newsletter and the Chinese Studies Association Newsletters in those not-so-distant years when communication depended on telephones, printing and posting. She was a member of the executive councils of both the Asian Studies Association of Australia and Chinese Studies Association of Australia multiple times. In March 2021 she was awarded Lifetime Membership of the ASAA for decades of contribution to the Association, including serving as China Councillor and monitoring national Asian language enrolments. In December 2025 she received the inaugural award for the Promotion of Chinese Studies in Australia from the CSAA.
Anne’s knowledge of the Asian Studies and Chinese Studies scene in Australia was profound. She was instrumental in providing information about national language enrolments across multiple decades as our professional bodies sought to understand the ebbs and flows of the field in schools and universities. Her most recent interventions, in the Australian Academy of Humanities 2023 Australia’s China Knowledge Capability Report,were invaluable. A staunch advocate for Australia’s need to build and refresh its Asia-expert citizens in all sectors, Anne identified the depth of the crisis in Honours enrolments and the problems that caused for the pipeline through to PhD. Anne’s contributions were instrumental in the research and writing that produced this landmark report. Anne was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities for pioneering scholarship in the ritual and performance culture of Chinese women in 2010.
Anne taught thousands of students at Victoria College (now part of Deakin University), Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School, La Trobe University, and, for the longest period, the University of Melbourne. She taught language, literature, history and culture, covering topics from the very practical to the highly theoretical. For many years she taught a subject on classical Chinese, the only one of its type in Melbourne, and introduced many students to the complexities and beauties of what Lu Xun’s madman called the zhi-hu-zhe-ye 之乎者也, the ambiguous and flexible grammar and vocabulary of the ancient Chinese canon. But she also taught subjects on contemporary business practices and human rights in East Asia, to name a few. In each of these she would prepare carefully, teach systematically and patiently, and value the relationships she formed with her students. In a world of trigger warnings, it is interesting to consider the way that Anne introduced the Tian’anmen uprising of 1989 to students from mainland China. Her intellectual honesty compelled her to show the brutality of the massacre in precise and confronting detail.
Outside the classroom, Anne developed deep and powerful relationships with the students she supervised at Honours and postgraduate level. As a supervisor Anne combined two contrasting talents. She could lay down the law at times, giving precise instructions about every aspect of the student’s project and indeed their wider lives. But she also gave students freedom. She regarded students’ work as their own and let them choose their intellectual pathways. She capably supervised theses on topics that diverged from her own research interests, including on anthropology, law and religion.
She placed high trust in her students, understood their needs, and committed considerable time and effort to helping them find work and develop careers. In return, Anne’s candour, wisdom, and genuinely ethical approach to her work meant that students trusted her. She followed her students’ lives with interest and pride. Anne supervised and taught students from many backgrounds, in and out of the Sinosphere. In part because of her own experiences, and in part because of her belief in the value of cultural education and exchange, she was particularly interested in teaching Chinese culture and language to people without a Chinese background and ensuring that they were not marginalised by the educational system.
Anne is remembered by those who taught and worked alongside her as someone with a commitment to workplace fairness, and to supporting those, particularly women, facing structural and institutional obstacles in areas such as academic promotion. Her scholarly concern with gender questions was matched by a strong sense of the obstacles that women in the university world faced, and of the need to take action to improve working conditions for women in higher education. Those who benefited from Anne’s support and example in this domain feel deeply grateful to her.
Anne was diagnosed with cancer in mid-2025, to the shock of family and colleagues. She approached this diagnosis pragmatically and worked until it became physically impossible. She leaves behind a large extended family, centred on her husband Lawrie and daughter Laura but encompassing hundreds of relatives, former students and colleagues, and friends. As Professor Sue Trevaskes said, everyone adored Anne. Her intellect, friendship, and kindness will be greatly missed.
(This is also written for the Australian Association of Asian Studies)