Universities like to present themselves as durable institutions. They outlast governments, ride out recessions, and take pride in the slow accumulation of knowledge. In Australia, that confidence has been tested by familiar pressures: tight public funding, culture-war skirmishes over expertise, and the awkward fact that a continent built on extractive wealth is also among the places most exposed to climate disruption. In that setting, science leadership is rarely confined to laboratories or lecture theaters. It spills into budgets, regulation, and public argument. It also demands translation: taking complex, often alarming evidence and turning it into something citizens and policymakers can use, without reducing it to slogans. Emma Johnston, who died in Melbourne on December 26, 2025, from complications associated with cancer, at 52, made that translation her trade. She was a marine ecologist by training and instinct, and a university leader by temperament. She became vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne in February 2025, returning to the institution where she had trained as a scientist. Johnston was born in 1973 and grew up near the water in Melbourne. School came with early signs of restlessness and initiative: she ran a student newspaper, started an environment group, and pushed a recycling program. Those were modest acts, but they pointed to a habit that stayed with her, a refusal to accept that problems should wait for permission to be solved. After completing a PhD in marine ecology at the University of Melbourne, she joined the University of New South Wales in 2001.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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