Interview with Barbara Brookes

Abstract

Barbara Brookes is a New Zealand historian and academic who specialises in women's history and medical history. She completed a bachelor's degree with honours at the University of Otago in 1976, then won a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she completed both her master's (1978) and doctoral (1982) degrees. Her PhD thesis topic was Abortion in England during the inter-war period (1918-1939), published as Abortion in England, 1900-1967 (Croom Helm, 1988; Routledge, 2012). After graduating from Bryn Mawr she returned to Aotearoa/New Zealand to complete post-doctoral studies at University of Otago and was offered a position in the university's Department of History in 1983 where she remained until her retirement in June 2020. In 1986, Brookes and her colleague, Dorothy Page introduced the first honours-level women's history course in New Zealand. In 2004, she became head of the Department of History and guided the amalgamation of the department with the art history department to form the Department of History and Art History. She has authored or edited thirteen books. Her A History of New Zealand Women (2016; Bridget Williams Books https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/a-history-of-new-zealand-women/), won the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award (Illustrated Non-Fiction category). Her most recent book, co-edited with James Dunk, is Knowledge Making: Historians, Archives and Bureaucracy (Routledge, 2020). In 2022, Brookes was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Ap_rangi. As professor emerita, she continues to pursue her research concerning gender relations in New Zealand, and the history of health and disease in New Zealand and Britain.