Rate My Professor Judith Holloway

Judith Holloway serves as Manager, Access and Operations at the Hocken Collections | Uare Taoka o Hākena, part of the University of Otago Library. In this capacity, she leads the Researcher Services team, which includes senior collections assistants and general assistants responsible for facilitating access to the collections. The Hocken Collections holds New Zealand's foremost research collections of Taoka Māori, Pacific, New Zealand, and international documentary heritage, encompassing archives and manuscripts, published works, art, and photography. Holloway's role ensures that researchers, students, and visitors can effectively utilize these resources for their studies and projects.

Holloway contributed to New Zealand's historiography of mental health as a postgraduate student in the University of Otago's History Department. Her work is featured in the 2001 University of Otago Press volume 'Unfortunate Folk: Essays on Mental Health Treatment, 1863-1992', edited by Barbara Brookes and Jane Thomson. This collection comprises essays by Otago History postgraduate students exploring topics such as electro-convulsive therapy, epilepsy, criminal lunacy, community care, staffing, and medical training in mental health institutions, with a particular focus on Otago's developments since the 1863 founding of the Dunedin Lunatic Asylum. Holloway's essay derives from her 1991 dissertation, 'Unfortunate Folk: A Study of the Social Context of Committal to Seacliff Asylum, 1928-37'. In it, she analyzes admissions patterns to Seacliff in the 1930s, critiquing overly simplistic social control models. Her scholarly assistance is widely recognized, as she is thanked in numerous University of Otago theses for support provided through the Hocken Collections.