Barbara Brookes


Barbara Lesley Brookes is a New Zealand historian and academic. She specialises in women's history and medical history.

Biography

Brookes completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Otago in 1976, then won scholarships to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she completed a master's degree and a PhD. Her PhD thesis topic was abortion in England during the inter-war period. Brookes was offered a post-doctoral scholarship at Otago and a permanent position in the university's Department of History in 1983.
In 1986, Brookes and her colleague Dorothy Page introduced the first university-level women's history paper in New Zealand. In 2004, Brookes 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 held the position until 2012.

''A History of New Zealand Women''

Brookes' sole-authored publication, A History of New Zealand Women, won the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award in the Illustrated Non-Fiction category. The book represents over thirty years of research on the topic of New Zealand women's history.
Marion Castree describes A History of New Zealand Women as "a superb New Zealand history through the perspective of women's lives and all they contributed to our comparatively short but intense experience in Aotearoa.... Beautifully illustrated and designed, this book will never date." Susanna Andrew, writing for noted.co.nz, says the book is "a brilliant examination of how we got to where we are now. Brookes has marked every change and shift with clarity and scholarly precision." Charlotte Paul, writing for the New Zealand Medical Journal, says that Brookes "weaves different perspectives of Māori and Pakeha lives into a tapestry that enriches our sense of what it is to be a New Zealander."

Publications

Brookes' publications include:
In 2017, Brookes' book A History of New Zealand Women won the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award in the Illustrated Non-Fiction category.
by the governor-general, Dame Patsy ReddyIn the 2018 New Year Honours, Brookes was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to historical research and women.