Rate My Professor Hugh Morrison

Professor Hugh Morrison holds the position of Professor in the University of Otago College of Education. He earned a BA (Hons) from the University of Otago, a BTh from the Auckland College of Theology (ACT), a PhD from Massey University, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). Morrison's academic journey began with graduate studies in Geography and History at the Christchurch College of Education, followed by a teaching position at New Plymouth Girls' High School. He then pursued theological study and professional youth work with a focus on volunteer adult training. His PhD in New Zealand religious history led to teaching contracts in the History Department at the University of Waikato, where he served as a History Research Associate from 2007 to 2017. Currently at the University of Otago, he teaches social sciences curriculum areas for pre-service secondary trainees, the history of children and young people, and education history. He was promoted to Professor in December 2025.

Morrison's research focuses on New Zealand and British world religious history, particularly the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant missionary movement and its relationship to children, childhood, youth, literature, and education. He employs transnational and comparative approaches across settings including New Zealand, Canada, and Scotland to explore how religion, empire, nation, education, geography, and family shaped identities. Key publications include Protestant missionary children's lives, c.1870-1950: Empire, religion and emotion (Manchester University Press, 2024); Protestant children, missions and education in the British World (Brill, 2021); 'Children, young people, Protestant missions, and history: An interdisciplinary conversation' (Mission Studies, 2025); 'Unconscious being: Settler girls, high school and colonialism in interwar New Zealand' (History of Education, 2025); and 'Happy families?: Scottish Presbyterian missionary children's homes, 1900s-1950s' (Scottish Church History, 2023). He has received an Elected Visiting Fellowship at Magdalen College, University of Oxford (2017) and a Visiting Fellowship at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh (2012). Morrison co-chairs the Australasian Regional Network of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, serves on the overseas committee of the Children's History Society (UK), and has judged the Grace Abbott Book Prize. He has delivered invited presentations at the Centre for the History of Childhood, University of Oxford, and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.