Professor Elizabeth Webby is a respected scholar, holding the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney until 2007. She is an expert in nineteenth-century Australian literature and is also interested in theatre, popular culture, short fiction, and the work of Patrick White, Henry Handel Richardson, and Katherine Mansfield.
Webby is an active member of the academic community and has written and edited numerous books, including The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2000), collections of essays, works about nineteenth-century Australia and feminism. Webby edited Southerly for twelve years, and contributed to The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, writing literary profiles on such authors as Miles Franklin, Marjorie Barnard, Flora Eldershaw, Gillian Mears and Jean Bedford.
Webby is a member of the editorial board of AustLit, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She retired in 2007.