It’s that time of year – time for the annual blog post on Centre activities, forthcoming publications, and other exciting news from our members.
Helen May’s year started with the award of a new years honour for services to education, becoming an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Hugh Morrison has a new book appearing with Otago University Press in February called Pushing Boundaries: New Zealand Protestants and overseas missions, 1827–1939 and it will be launched in early April. He has also accepted an invitation to join the Grace Abbott Book Prize Committee (international Society for the History of Children and Youth), to decide on the “best book in the field published in English over the previous year”.
In February the Centre is hosting the Making Women Visible Conference, which honours Barbara Brookes, and features the launch of her new book, A History of New Zealand Women, on the conference programme.
In December Tony Ballantyne was awarded the W. H. Oliver Prize by the New Zealand Historical Association for his book Entanglements of Empire, published by Auckland University Press. In November Tony gave a keynote at the Race, Mobility and Imperial Networks Conference in Melbourne. He has contributed a chapter to How Empire Shaped Us (Bloomsbury) and his co-edited book with Antoinette Burton, World Histories from Below (Bloomsbury), will appear in September.
Tom Brooking is on Research and Study Leave, and will spend some time at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Munich, and as a visiting scholar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University.
Angela Wanhalla and Lachy Paterson were promoted to Associate Professor.
Angela Wanhalla is co-organising the Making Women Visible Conference, and in October 2015 replaced Tony Ballantyne as co-editor, with Barbara Brookes, of the New Zealand Journal of History.
Annabel Cooper was one of four scholars awarded the inaugural University of Otago Prestigious Writing Grant to complete her book Screen Wars: Remaking the New Zealand Wars in Celluloid and Pixels, which charts changes to screen narratives about colonial conflict from the silent film era to the age of the phone app.
In 2015 Megan Pōtiki contributed an essay to a special issue of the New Zealand of History dedicated to Māori history, as did Michael Stevens.
The April 2016 volume of the New Zealand Journal of History is a special issue dedicated to ‘New Zealand Sexual Histories’. It is co-edited by Chris Brickell and Angela Wanhalla, and is an outcome of the workshop, supported by the Centre, they co-convened in July 2015.
Judy Bennett contributed a chapter to New Zealand’s Empire (Manchester University Press), co-edited by Katie Pickles and Cathy Coleborne. In 2015 the Chief of Army (Australia) invited Judy to address the Chief of Army History Conference in Canberra, on the theme Geo-Strategy and War: enduring lessons for the Australian Army, held at the Ballroom, National Convention Centre, 30 September-1 October. She spoke on “South Pacific: Using Indigenous resources in the Second World War”. Following the open conference, Judy also contributed to a ‘closed’ one-day teaching-learning session on scenarios for possible military and civil disturbances that may involve the Australian armed forces in the region, including the Pacific. Her visit was fully funded by the Chief of the Army.
Congratulations to all!
