Marlene Norst

Marlene Johanna Norst (24 March 1930 – 20 December 2010) was an Australian linguist, pedagogue and philanthropist of Austrian heritage.

Norst’s father was employed in a cannery in Leeton as the food technologist and tasked with establishing a laboratory.

In 1974 she worked for a year in the Linguistics Department at the University of Edinburgh, doing research on the perception of intonation patterns by native and non-native speakers, using synthesised and natural speech.

In 1978 she was attached to the Linguistics Department of Vienna University and worked on language planning in multi-lingual societies.

Norst participated in numerous linguistic conferences (e.g. 1982 in Mexico and the Netherlands) and gave lectures at universities in London, Vienna, Hamburg and Oldenburg.

She taught English language and literacy to international students, migrants as well as street kids and ex-prisoners at institutions including Sydney Skill Share, Wesley Skill Share and Street Smart, as well as Sydney TAFE and Nature Care.

In 1991 she was awarded the University of Newcastle Convocation Medal for "Outstanding Professional Merit" and 1995 the "Ehrenkreuz für Literatur und Wissenschaft der Republik Österreich" (The Cross of Honour for Literature and Science of the Republic of Austria) Norst translated a number of German plays into English – including works by Igor Bauersima, Falk Richter, Lukas Bärfuss, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Reto Finger, Margareth Obexer, Agnes Gerstenberg.