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Research Student Profiles
Current research students within the History Programme are listed below in alphabetical order. The title of their dissertation and a brief summary is included.
Sabbaq Ahmed
'Religious ideology and Muslim militancy in South Asia: selected case studies', PhD thesis
Supervisors: Professor Sekhar Bandhyopadhyay and Dr David Capie (PSIR)
Lanei Alexander
'The discourse on excessive consumption, England 1558-1640', MA thesis
Supervisor: Dr Glyn Parry
Hayley Brown
‘Divorce in New Zealand, 1898 - 1959’, PhD thesis
Supervisors: Associate Professor Charlotte Macdonald and Associate Professor Dolores Janiewski
This project will investigate why the New Zealand divorce rate increase steadily from the change in legislation in 1898 to 1959. This is a key question in New Zealand historiography, yet to be fully explored by historians. A number of key questions arise from this study. Particularly, what does this increasing rate have to say about the societal values and practices in New Zealand in the first half of the twentieth century? Marriage was a crucial institution in New Zealand society, marking a significant event in a person’s life. It formed a personal, social, legal, financial and economic relationship with another individual. Moreover, marriage plays a major role in the creation of gender identities. The question may be asked, how these identities were shaped in the face of an increasing divorce rate? This study aims to uncover whether changing gender norms led to an increase in the divorce rate, or whether the increase itself helped to spur a more fundamental shift in societal values. Divorce also posed a potential problem to existing conceptions of the family – conceptions that may have been challenged in the face of a rising divorce rate.
Biography
Hayley was born and educated in Christchurch. In 1999 she began studying at the University of Canterbury. She completed her BA with a double major in history and English in 2001 and her first class honours degree in history in 2002. Her MA thesis, ‘“A Woman’s Right to Choose”: Second Wave Feminist Advocacy of Abortion Law Reform in New Zealand and New South Wales from the 1970s’, was awarded a MA with distinction in 2004. After two years of living in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan, where she was an English teacher at a high school, Hayley returned to New Zealand to take up a PhD scholarship at Victoria in September 2006.
Jo Bunce
‘The Contribution of James Macandrew to Otago Provincial History’, PhD thesis
Supervisors: Associate Professor Jim McAloon and Professor James Belich (Stout Research Centre)
James Campbell
‘William Cecil’s Patronage of Alchemical Projects’, MA thesis
Supervisor: Dr Glyn Parry
Andrew Cooper
'Allies or Antagonists?: U.S.-Iran Relations, the “Oil Shock,” and the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations’, 1973-79', PhD thesis
Supervisors: Associate Professor Dolores Janiewski and PVC International, Dr Rob Rabel
My project examines the impact the 1973 Oil Shock had on U.S.-Iran relations in the years that preceded the 1979 Islamic Revolution. If access to cheap oil was indeed the primary justification for America’s twenty-five year, multi-billion dollar investment in Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime, then to what extent did the Shah’s aggressive efforts to boost oil prices in the mid-1970s alter American perceptions of his value and loyalty as an ally? My study seeks to investigate the extent to which the Shah’s policies led the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations to reassess their support for him, what if any steps they took to express their opposition to the Shah’s drive for higher oil prices and greater autonomy.
Biography
In 2008, Andrew returned to Wellington to do his Ph.D. after sixteen years spent living overseas. In 1991, he graduated from Victoria with a BA (Hons.), and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate school of Journalism in 1994. During the fourteen years Andrew lived in the United States, where he gained citizenship, he conducted research and advocacy for the United Nations, and on behalf of Human Rights Watch to benefit the 1997 Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Andrew completed a master’s degree in strategic studies from the University of Aberdeen in 2008.
Malcolm Craig
‘Korea: The Bomb That Never Dropped', MA thesis
Supervisor: Associate Professor Dolores Janiewski
Jeremy Cresswell
'Provincial Punches: Cartooning the Irish in 1860s New Zealand', MA thesis
Supervisor: Miles Fairburn
Michael Devine
‘A Biography of John Prestall’, MA thesis
Supervisor: Dr Glyn Parry
Tristan Egarr
‘The influence of warfare on New Zealand’s police and prisons, 1876-1925’, MA thesis
Supervisor: Professor Richard Hill (Stout Research Centre)
Martin Fisher
‘Treaty reports', PhD thesis
Supervisors: Professor James Belich and Professor Richard Hill (Stout Research Centre)
Michael Gill
‘Another Swashbuckling Elizabethan: William Herle and the English Secret Service’, MA thesis
Supervisor: Dr Glyn Parry
Robert Hurley
'Mutual Misreadings: History, Postmodernism, and the Misinterpretation of Science', PhD thesis
Supervisor: Miles Fairburn and Dr Alexander Maxwell
Basil Keane
'Kotahitanga Parliament, 1892-1902', MA thesis
Supervisors: Professor James Belich and Professor Richard Hill (Stout Research Centre)
Erin Keenan
'20th Century Maori Urbanisation', PhD thesis
Supervisors: Professor Richard Hill (Stout Research Centre) and Dr Evan Roberts
Sienna Latham
'Women and Alchemy in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England', MA thesis
Supervisor: Dr Glyn Parry
Susann Liebich
‘Book markets and reading culture in the British World, c. 1890 to 1930s’
Supervisors: Associate Professor Charlotte Macdonald and Sydney Shep
My thesis will look at the specific reading culture of New Zealand, from 1890 to 1930, framed by its place in the British World. It will contribute to our understanding of how the British World was connected, not only politically but above all culturally. I am intending to investigate the field of literary supply and circulation throughout the British Empire, looking in particular at the most distant colony. The question will be how readers and reading bridged this geographical distance and made cultural, literary, intellectual or educational connections across space and time through print. Literature – in all meanings of the term – together with newspapers, magazines and private letters, circulated between the metropole, the antipodes and across the empire in great quantity. The ideas and thoughts contained in these writings formed people’s minds and shaped their ways of thinking and world views.
Reading , as a cultural activity, is situated within the interdisciplinary field of book history, defined as the study of the creation, dissemination, and reception of texts. To date, book history has been most intensively examined in the context of histories of the book, whether in Australia, Canada and Britain. While these works are defined on national terms, I suggest that reading must be seen as a cross-national and connecting activity. While specific angles and perspectives vary, there is still one common theme: the conviction that the texts people read leaves an impression on their mind and that the material contained in books could lead to substantial cultural, social, political and ultimately power changes, if not disruptions. But how did the texts people read influence their way of thinking, their way of life? Why is it that some texts have such a profound influence on their readers’ minds while others do not? What role do the circumstances in which people read play? This study locates the transmission of ideas and influences in print-based media and negotiated through identifiable reading practices and institutions. While I do not propose to find a satisfactory and complete answer to this major question of intellectual influence, my thesis will attempt to at least make some suggestions and shed some light on the reading experience in the British World and specifically New Zealand.
The main overarching idea in this thesis is the understanding of the British Empire as being a web of trade, knowledge and migration. Ideas, artefacts, and people travelled around and across the British realm in great quantity. Networks of contacts, communication and exchange played an important role in creating an imperial culture. Simon Potter has pointed out that these diverse connections bound ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, but also forged links between each of the settler colonies, creating more complex webs of communication than has previously been acknowledged. He investigated the newspaper networks in the period from 1876 to 1914 and argued that the press was an important medium of imperial mass communication. Similarly the thesis will illustrate that books and literature circulated around the empire and thus were instrumental in creating an imperial culture. Potter has also convincingly shown that newspapers around the empire were dependent on each other and economic conditions often resulted in a rather uniform coverage. Similarly the thesis seeks to explore whether, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, readers in New Zealand and elsewhere in the British World relied heavily on the choices made by their British suppliers or whether influences and dependencies were rather reciprocal and by no means a one-way flow. The question will be whether and how this, perhaps mutual, relationship of dependence changed in the first half of the twentieth century and whether the formal disbanding of the British Empire in this part of the world was mirrored in the re-organisation of the book trade and thus the reading culture.
Biography
I was born and raised in Halle, Germany and studied at the University of Leipzig. In 2003, I received an MA in Media and Communication Studies, History and Psychology. Having had a keen interest in all matters to do with books, it was only natural that my MA thesis was in book culture (in Leipzig within media studies); I investigated the phenomenon of the ‘paperback revolution’ in West Germany after the Second World War. In between I worked for several years at both ends of the book trade; in a bookstore for ‘belles-lettres and academic literature’ and for a major German publishing house. A strong urge for seeing the world brought me down under in 2004, and I have probably seen more places in New Zealand than most Kiwis. I decided to take up further studies and completed a BA (Hons) in History at Victoria in 2006. For my PhD project, I have been awarded a Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship by the New Zealand government.
Steven Loveridge
'The Construction and Circulation of a Cold War Culture in New Zealand through the late 1940s and into the 1950s', PhD thesis
Supervisors: Professor Jamie Belich (Stout Research Centre) and PVC International, Dr Roberto Rabel
Grace Millar
'Families and Communities in the 1951 Waterfront Dispute', PhD thesis
Supervisors: Associate Professor Charlotte Macdonald and Associate Professor Jim McAloon
Nick Radburn
'The Government role in the British Transatlantic slave trade', MA thesis
Supervisor: Dr Steve Behrendt
Samuel Ritchie
‘Missionary Encounters with the “Heathen”: Māori and the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia in the European Imagination to c.1850’, MA thesis
Supervisors: Associate Professor Charlotte Macdonald and Dr Adrian Muckle
The intention of my thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the contrasting assigned places of Māori and the Aboriginal peoples of Australia on the Europeans’ racial hierarchy. Firstly, I will examine the writings on Māori and the Aboriginal peoples of Australia made by early European explorers to, and residents in, Australasia and the writings of philosophers who used these descriptions to discuss ideas about race. I intend to use these writings to investigate Māori and the Aboriginal peoples of Australia in the European imagination at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and their respective places on the European’s racial hierarchy. Through an examination of the writings of selected Evangelical missionaries who travelled to Australia in the first half of the nineteenth century – particularly George Clarke, William Yate and Francis Tuckfield – I will then examine Māori and the Aboriginal peoples of Australia in the European missionary imagination. I then intend to explore the similarities and differences between these images of the indigenous Antipodeans pre-missionary contact with post-missionary contact. I also propose to investigate the picture of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia in the humanitarian imagination with the image of them imagined by those who had settled in Australia with non-humanitarian goals. These pictures will then be examined in an attempt to answer why Māori were placed near the top of all non-Europeans on the racial hierarchy in contrast to the assigned position of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, near, if not at, the bottom of all humankind.
Biography
I grew up in the small Waikato township of Raglan and attended Raglan Area School before moving to Hamilton to attend Melville High School in 1998. In 2004 I moved to Dunedin to study at the University of Otago where I graduated with a BA (Hons) in History in 2007.
Lisa Sacksen
‘'Expressions of resistance: Communist Organisations in New Zealand 1970-1992. Their development, influence, fall and legacy’, PhD thesis
Supervisosr: Professor James Belich (Stout Research Centre) and Dr Giacomo Lichtner
Communist organisations in New Zealand have always been small, electorally insignificant and out of the mainstream of politics and society. Nevertheless, despite their small membership, they have had a disproportionate influence in a number of key areas, particularly the trade union movement, student organisations and cultural activities. An examination of the resistance they exerted against the grain of the times and against the cultural and political hegemony of pakeha ‘middle’ New Zealand will demonstrate not only on their own development and contribution to a more indigenised radical response to this hegemony, but will also shed light on the majority history of this period.
The latter years of the 1960s were notable for the introduction and development of new forms of communist organisation in New Zealand: the Socialist Action League (SAL), New Zealand’s largest Trotskyite organisation was formed in 1969 with a line of building the “permanent revolution”, the decision of the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) to support the Chinese in the Sino-Soviet split (1965), resulted in Chinese Communist ideology (the three worlds theory, for example) being introduced into New Zealand, while the Soviet ideas of “peaceful co-existence” were being publicised through the Socialist Unity Party (SUP) the pro-Soviet party that was formed in 1966 out of the refusniks who left the CPNZ .
These ideologies were in competition with one another, even though they all had the same aim, the removal of the capitalist system and its replacement by socialism. In part this competition was a reflection of the competition between the countries concerned; the USSR and the People’s Republic of China. In part it represented real theoretical differences: the Leninist idea of a vanguard party, which both the SAL and CPNZ adopted, as opposed to the peaceful parliamentary road to socialism which the SUP put forward. These rival ideologies, their effects upon the work of the organisations concerned, and their adaptation to New Zealand conditions, will underpin much of the work of this study.
Communist organisations in New Zealand rode with varying degrees of success the pressures internal and external on communist orthodoxy. All were changed, diminished or dissolved by the end of this period. Bitterly divided as they were, the story of these small organisations, with their dedication to political and social action, will encompass the history of the causes in which they were involved: women’s rights; the organisation of the unemployed; gay rights; trade union work; freedom from foreign control; the peace movement; anti-racist and pro-Māori land rights; the environmental protection movements, and many international issues, such as the Vietnam War, the struggle against Apartheid and the campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific.
A lot of the people involved in these organisations are still alive. Primary sources are available for all the organisations featured, though some have more material in repositories than others. There are no secondary sources, however, dealing directly with the topic. This makes the historigraphical part of the thesis more problematic, and means that there is no recognised authority, or debate, to ‘anchor’ my findings.
While communists in New Zealand have always been small in number they have had an impact and influence which belie their numerical strength. This is in part because they had a strategic view of developments in New Zealand society, they were well organised (in the main) and they were prepared to work hard to achieve their goals. By their existence and analysis they provide a counter-history and challenge the prevailing narrative of New Zealand history.
Biography
I first studied at Victoria in the 1970’s, and eventually, having become involved in student politics, completed a BA in English and History. At that time the main thrust of the teaching of the History Department was towards European history and I didn’t take a single paper that dealt with New Zealand history. I think my third year papers were on the French Revolution, Religion in Tudor England and Charlemagne. The next major events in my life were buying a house, having a baby and getting married. This was followed by another baby, moving to London and having yet another baby. We lived in London for nearly fifteen years.To distract myself from this I started to study archaeology at Birkbeck College of the University of London. I took part in a training dig at Bignor Roman Villa, and was about to embark on a field trip to Libya, when we returned home to New Zealand. I comforted myself with the lack of archaeology at Victoria by taking part in a dig in Uzbekistan run by the University of Sydney. However this was quite an expensive undertaking, so I turned to Geology (up to 200 level) and then Classics. Finally I decided to stop mithering around and enrolled in History Honours, which I completed last year. My 489 essay was on Dr Theodore Gray, the Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals and the Mental Defectives Amendment Act of 1928.
James Taylor
‘Harry Atkinson and the Socialist Church, c.1890s-1907’, MA thesis
Supervisors: Associate Professor Jim McAloon
My MA thesis is examining the relationship between the New Zealand labour/ socialist movement and the weekly British socialist newspaper the Clarion. The Clarion was founded in 1891 by Robert Blatchford, who at the time was a widely known and influential author and journalist, writing books such as Britain for the British and Merrie England. In the 1890s and early twentieth century the paper promoted a broadly culturalist and ethical-moral conception of socialism as a “way of life”, influenced by an eclectic variety of thinkers, ideas and schools of thought. The pages of the newspaper were one of the main sites of socialist debate, and also an influential organ for preaching to both the converted and unconverted, while the newspaper was also a hub for a number of cultural organisations that it spawned- such as rambling groups, cycling club, and choirs.
Despite the relatively large amount of British work on the Clarion, there has been little study of the relationship between the paper and New Zealand’s wider intellectual and associational currents. There was certainly a readership in New Zealand, but the oversight of the papers influence is even more glaring because of the fairly well known boatloads of Clarion readers who settled in New Zealand in 1900. My research will be focused upon this group of Clarion settlers (“Clarionettes”) who came to New Zealand following a visit in 1899 by one of the main financial backers of the newspaper, William Ranstead. He was highly impressed with the Liberal’s political and social reforms, describing New Zealand, in reports published in the newspaper, as a “socialist Canaan. Following the publication of the articles the Clarion’s office was flooded with inquiries and requests for more information, and the decision was made for a group emigration. Two hundred settlers arrived in 1900. Their plans for a co-operative farm were dashed soon after they arrived because the government refused to allow land title to a collective, and members of the original group soon began to disperse throughout the country. Clarion fellowships were formed for the settlers to keep in touch with one another, and these fellowships became a launch-pad for New Zealand’s first Socialist Party in 1904.
There are three main aspects to my research. The first, and main empirical focus, is tracing the Clarion settlers using a combination of primary sources and also databases- I’m interested in what happened to the original group, those that became active in socialist politics here, and also those that ‘disappeared’ and settled. The second aspect is a wider theoretical one: I’d like to contextualise the group and the newspaper’s influence in NZ within a wider transnational framework- highlighting the cross border movement of people and ideas. The third element is historiographical: a major aim of my project is to excavate the ideologies of New Zealand’s early socialist intellectuals and groups in the two decades before World War One, which have tended to be overshadowed by a focus on the leaders and industrial unionism of the “Red” Federation of Labour.
My main argument is that the Clarion settlers and their interaction with New Zealand society is a neglected aspect of early socialist organisation and activity. Despite the failure of their initial co-operative farm project, it is arguable that their impact is more important than has been acknowledged. Thus, in broad terms my research, will examine the depiction of New Zealand as a worker’s paradise, and attempt to trace the organisation of the settlement, the settlers’ aspirations, their movements and activities after arrival, connecting their Old World experiences to their subsequent New World activities and activism.
Biography
I was born in Auckland, and raised in Wanganui, before moving to Wellington at age 12. I went to secondary school here and began my studies at Victoria in 1998. I was originally enrolled in a double degree- BA and LLB. However, I came to my senses in 2000 and dropped law and completed my BA majoring in History and Sociology at the end of that year. In 2001 I completed a BA (Hons) in History and Sociology. Having spent summer holidays with my mother who was working in Europe (from 1999) I didn’t have the travel bug that afflicted many of my compadres, and instead decided in 2002 to enrol in the taught Masters of New Zealand Studies course at the Stout Research Centre. The MNZS was a way for me to learn about NZ’s history and society, an area I thought was sorely lacking in my knowledge, having mostly done courses on political, social and historical theory undergraduate papers. The MNZS provided me with a wealth of knowledge to fill in my gaps, but last year I decided not to seek the qualification. Since 2001 I’ve worked in a variety of jobs: assisting with footnotes for a (still unpublished) book; at TVNZ for two years archiving stock footage from the 1980s, and more recently tutoring first year courses. The past summer has been spent writing and researching Historic Places Trust reports. I also become involved with the Trade Union History Project, since 2002, and am a member of the organising committee and various other sub-committees. A result of this involvement was giving a paper at a conference on the 1913 strike held in 2002 and which has since been enlarged as a chapter for Melanie’s forthcoming book, Revolution: The 1913 Strike in New Zealand.
Elizabeth Walker
'The attitudes towards, treatment of, and general experience of New Zealand’s wounded returned servicemen in the wake of the Great War', MA thesis
Supervisors: Dr Kate Hunter and Dr Evan Roberts
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