Rate My Professor Angela Wanhalla

Angela Wanhalla is Professor and Head of Programme in History at the University of Otago. Of Ngāi Tahu descent from Taumutu and Otakou, she holds a PhD (2005), MA (2001), and BA (Hons) (1999), all from the University of Canterbury. Following postdoctoral research on intermarriage in the Canadian prairies at the University of Saskatchewan, she joined the University of Otago as a lecturer and advanced to professor. She serves as Academic Subject Adviser for History in Semester 2 and supervises research in New Zealand history, Māori, Pacific and Indigenous history, women’s and feminist history, environmental history, colonial history, and history of the family.

Professor Wanhalla specialises in Māori, New Zealand, colonial, environmental, and women’s history, with extensive work on gender, race, and marriage in New Zealand and the Pacific. Her publications include Matters of the Heart: A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand (2013, Auckland University Press), In/Visible Sight: The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand (2009, Bridget Williams Books), Of Love and War: Pacific Brides of World War II (2023, University of Nebraska Press), Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori Home Front during the Second World War (2024, co-authored with S. Christie, L. Paterson, R. Webb, E. Newman, Auckland University Press), He Reo Wāhine: Māori Women’s Voices from the Nineteenth Century (2017, co-authored with L. Paterson, Auckland University Press), and Books of Mana: 180 Māori-Authored Books of Significance (2025, co-edited with J. Ruru, J. Wikaira, Otago University Press). She received a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (2013-2018) and co-led a Marsden-funded project on the Māori Home Front (2019-2023). Current research with Dr. Claire Macindoe examines Māori servicemen’s access to medical care during and after World War II. In 2024, she delivered her Inaugural Professorial Lecture titled Whānau, Whenua and History.