Helen Bethea Gardner

Born in Balclutha, southern New Zealand, to a family that attended the local Presbyterian Church and argued over theological and political issues, Helen left South Otago High School at the age of sixteen. After almost failing her first year at Canterbury University she fled to Melbourne, where she was inducted into punk and politics in the pub culture of the inner city.

She worked as a printer, flower seller, kitchen hand, grape picker etc, before eventually returning to study, this time to La Trobe University, to undertake a Pacific Studies Major. After completing her Honours Degree she won a Commonwealth Scholarship to begin a PhD.

While deciding on a topic she clearly stated to her supervisor that she was prepared to study any aspect of Pacific History as long as it did not involve missionaries. Five years later she completed her dissertation on the Methodist missionary, George Brown.

Following a teaching fellowship at the University of Otago she secured a position at Deakin University in Melbourne where she teaches Pacific Studies and History to Undergraduate and Masters Students.

She is currently working on a book on the missionary anthropologists in Oceania in the nineteenth century.

In April 2006 Otago University Press published Gathering for God: George Brown in Oceania.