Michael King Memorial Lecture
The Michael King Memorial Lecture was established in 2004 to commemorate the contribution of acclaimed writer Michael King to New Zealand history.
2022: Ruth Ross, te Tiriti o Waitangi and the lives of history in Aotearoa New Zealand – Professor Bain Attwood
Fifty years ago, a remarkable historian by the name of Ruth Ross (1920–1982) published an article in the New Zealand Journal of History entitled ‘Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Texts and Translations’. In the decades that followed, this article came to exert a profound influence on New Zealanders’ understanding of the historic treaty and helped to make the document central to New Zealand law, politics, and culture.
Few pieces of academic history writing, let alone a journal article, have ever had such an impact on a nation’s life. How might we best explain this extraordinary event? And what might such an explanation reveal about the making of history in New Zealand?
Date: Thursday 29 September 2022
Venue: Burns 1 Lecture Theatre, Dunedin
Time: 5:30–7:00pm
Past Lectures
2019 Dr Ali Clarke, 'The Historian’s Tale: Writing 150 years of the University of Otago’s history'
2018 Lizzie Marvelly, 'The Modern Suffragist'
2017 Professor Sir Richard J. Evans (Cambridge), 'War in the Nazi Imagination'
2016 Professor James Belich (Oxford), 'Hunt-driven expansion in New Zealand and Global History'
2015 Sir Tipene O’Regan, A W-anaka Without Walls: A K-ai Tahu Knowledge Base of Our Own
2014 Christopher Pugsley, 'The New Zealanders at Gallipoli - A Centennial re-assessment?'
2013 Professor Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck, University of London), 'Why are You Doing This To Me? Sexual Violence in the Past and Today'
2012 Grahame Sydney, 'Regionalism Forever: Reflections on My Backyard'
2011 Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, 'Weaving Stories<: Reflecting on the Writings of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau'
2010 Jock Phillips, 'Constructing a Past: Hocken and the Memorialising of History'
2009 Tom Brooking, 'Tall Tales: Richard John Seddon and the Building of “God’s Own Country”'
2008 Brian Easton, 'Race Relations and the Economy'
2007 Sam Elworthy, 'Who Needs Books? Readers, Writers and Publishers in the Age of the Internet'
2006 C. K. Stead, '50 Years Ago: Some Images of the Young Poet and his Elders Brasch, Curnow, Sargeson'
2005 Michael Cullen, 'Two Ticks for Clio: Reflections on New Zealand Politics and History'
2004 Marti Friedlander, 'Photography as History'
