Vale Siobhan O'Sullivan: Don't mourn, organise!

Abstract

It is with a sense of privilege as well as loss that many are celebrating the contributions of Associate Professor Siobhan O'Sullivan, as well as mourning her. She passed away on 17 June 2023. Siobhan was an excellent scholar who made significant contributions to research on animal rights and welfare systems. She was also a tireless advocate for the disadvantaged—both humans and non-human animals. Her passion and service were exemplary, and she paved the way for new researchers in public management, political science, and animal welfare studies. Siobhan was both a thinker and a doer, who never tired of trying to make the world fairer.

Siobhan was employed at the University of New South Wales until illness stopped her from working a few months ago. She was much loved by her colleagues there and at the University of Melbourne where she was previously employed for 7 years. A great contributor to the animal studies, public management, and political science communities in Australia and around the world, many will remember not just her scholarship but also her personal charm and strength.

Siobhan was an integral part of the long-standing ‘welfare to work’ research team, based at the University of Melbourne. In 2015, Getting Welfare to Work: Street Level Governance in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands (co-authored with Mark Considine, Jenny M. Lewis and Els Sol) was published by Oxford University Press. The edited collection Contracting-out Welfare Services: Comparing National Policy Designs for Unemployment Assistance, edited by O'Sullivan and Considine, was published in the same year by Wiley. In 2022, she published Buying and Selling the Poor (Sydney University Press), co-authored with Michael McGann and Mark Considine.

She conducted research into the delivery of contracted employment services in Australia, the United Kingdom, and around the world. Her research on the welfare state was widely published, and she contributed to research reports on social services and the welfare state for Australasian and international audiences, including in the Australian Journal of Public Administration (see Gallet et al., 2015).

Siobhan's first and always greatest passion was animal rights. Her PhD, titled Animal Visibility and Equality in Liberal Democratic States: A Study Into Animal Ethics and the Nature of Bias in Animal Protection Regulation, was awarded in 2008 at the University of Sydney. This thesis formed the basis of her 2011 book Animals, Equality and Democracy, published by Palgrave Macmillan. She also co-edited the collection: The Political Turn in Animal Ethics, with Robert Garner, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016. Her scholarship on animal studies also generated many journal articles.

She was a key figure in the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics, with animal ethics informed by political theory rather than moral philosophy. In Animals, Equality and Democracy, she explored the issue of the unequal treatment of members of different species in contemporary societies, drawing a distinction between the ‘external inconsistency’ and the ‘internal inconsistency’, with the former being the inconsistency between the treatment of humans and other animals, and the latter being the inconsistency between the treatment of different non-human animals. Siobhan argued that those animals who are more visible are offered greater protection under the law.

Beyond her excellent scholarship, Siobhan will be remembered for her principles and passion, her commitment to service, her incredible communication skills, and her sparkling wit and joyful presence.

Her principles and passion were evident in everything she did—from inquiring with waiters in Birmingham that there was indeed no butter in the Balti, to hunting out vegan restaurants in Prague; there was never any sense that she would compromise. This characteristic flowed through all her remarkable advocacy and activism around animal studies and was undiminished when, in August 2020, Siobhan was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She became an ambassador for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation, and she features on their website. While living with cancer, she publicly campaigned for the legalisation of voluntary assisted dying in her home state of New South Wales. The Bill was passed in May 2022.

Siobhan's commitment to service was extraordinary. She embraced (voluntary) board work for the Australian Political Studies Association and the International Research Society for Public Management, as well as Australian and international animal studies associations. She was crucial to the establishment of the Australasian Animal Studies Association and established animal studies prizes with that association. Everything she did was at full tilt—no half measures.

Communication and networking seemed to be totally natural for Siobhan, because of her innate empathy and curiosity. She was the founding host of the regular animal studies podcast Knowing Animals in which she talked to animal studies scholars about their research. Knowing Animals was launched in 2015, and a second series called Protecting Animals, which features interviews with animal advocates about their practical work for animals. She was a great social media presence on multiple fronts. For the welfare-to-work research team, she was a key link with the employment service providers and their umbrella associations, who partnered in this research. She was a regular fixture at employment services conferences and adept at talking to whoever she met there. Speakers at her funeral were urged to ‘not be boring’ and everyone was treated to her thoughtfulness in making her passing easier. In her final weeks, she took the time to seek out people who had given her gifts and return them, so mementos of Siobhan are now in many places—as if she could ever be forgotten.

Finally, Siobhan had a wonderful sense of humour and really knew how to ‘bring the fun’. Whether she was indulging in trivia or stand-up comedy with friends, playing basketball (very badly, she always claimed), urging people to get on social media, grappling with convoluted travel plans, convincing people to get involved, or landing a journal article, there was always laughter. Her ability to light up the room was truly legendary—that hair, that smile, that laugh!

She will be sadly missed by her many colleagues and friends in Australia and all around the world, including the welfare-to-work research team comprised of myself, Mark Considine, Michael McGann, Phuc Nguyen, and Sarah Ball. But she is surely somewhere channelling Joe Hill, the Swedish-American labour activist and songwriter, urging us all along with ‘Don't mourn, organise!’ because that is the kind of person she was.