Guest Editor's Note:

Tracey Banivanua Mar (1974–2017)

In 2015, Tracey Banivanua Mar and I co-convened a "Counter Networks of Empires" Symposium, held at La Trobe University Franklin Street campus, Melbourne. Tracey had invited me to co-convene the conference while I was employed as a Research Assistant on her unfinished ARC "Land and Colonial Cultures" project. In thinking about the concept of "counter networks" Tracey was continuing lines of thinking she was developing across her research projects, and in her award-winning article "Shadow Networks." Following the symposium, Tracey and I set to work on this special issue. But in August 2017, Tracey passed away from cancer, too soon, and was unable to finish our jointly-authored introduction or complete further editorial work. In her last days Tracey strongly encouraged us to continue working on this special issue. We have pursued it in ways informed by and indebted to Tracey's insights, and in the hope that the conversations and ways of thinking opened up in the symposium will continue.

We dedicate this issue to her memory.