Born on a grazing property called "Cressbrook", Ursula McConnel was the eighth child of grazier James Henry McConnel and his wife, Mary Elizabeth McConnel. Raised on the Cressbrook property in what has been described as an "austere" and "repressed" family environment, she was: Ursula McConnell has been described as a brave, free-thinking, open questing woman with sometimes strong emotions, growing up at a time when the first wave of feminism n Australia was coming of age: ".. a perfect test case for the various ideas of self-creation.." who also, during troubled times studying, came under the shaping influence of her brother-in-law and psychologist Elton Mayo, husband of her sister Dorothea McConnel: She was once engaged, never married, and being financially secure in her investments in wool bonds, devoted her life to her anthropological research endeavours in Western Cape York Peninsula, driven by a strong sense of duty and justice to the people with whom she had worked.
Education
At New England Girls' School she received prizes in singing and languages. From ages 17 to 19 she attended courses in history, politics, literature, and music at King's College London. By the age of 20 she completed and attained a first-class honours in philosophy and psychology at the University of Queensland. At the age of 35 she commenced a doctorate in anthropology at University College London, but, lonely, stressed, and ill she returned to Australia in 1927 without completing her doctorate. On her return, under Professor Alfred Radcliffe-Brown she started doing ethnographic research amongst the Wik Mungkan people, Cape York Peninsula.
Career
Between 1927 and 1934 McConnel undertook five field trips into the Cape, and published numerous articles plus a book mostly about the Wik Mungkan people, and the Aboriginal Australians of Cape York generally. During this period she was also awarded a Rockefeller fellowship to study under Edward Sapir at Yale University, in the United States of America. Her series of articles in Walkabout magazine in 1936 promoted her research, and her concern over the treatment by government and missions of aboriginal people, to the general public. She attempted to obtain a doctorate in anthropology from University College, London, by submitting her publications, but, in the end, never obtained that doctorate, though still laying a significant foundation for present day anthropological research amongst the Aboriginal peoples of the region.
