Barbara Brookes

Barbara Brookes MNZM
Barbara Brookes at a book signing in Christchurch, New Zealand, August 2016
Nationality	New Zealander
Alma mater	University of Otago Bryn Mawr College
Scientific career
Fields	History

Barbara Brookes MNZM (born 1955) is a New Zealand historian and academic. She specialises in women's history and medical history.

Brookes completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Otago in 1976, then won scholarships to the women's college Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she completed a master's degree (1978) and a doctorate (1982). 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 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.

Her recent sole-authored A History of New Zealand Women (Bridget Williams Books, 2016), winner of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award in the illustrated Non-Fiction category, represents over thirty years of research on the topic of New Zealand women's history, inaugurated with her co-edited volume with Margaret Tennant and Charlotte Macdonald Women in History (Allen & Unwin), published in 1986. Marion Castree describes the 2016 volume in these terms: "This is 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."

Publications

Brookes' publications include:

• A History of New Zealand Women (Bridget Williams Books, 2016)
• Sites of Gender: Women, Men & Modernity in Southern Dunedin, 1890–1939, co-edited with Robin Law and Annabel Cooper (Auckland University Press, 2003)
• 'Unfortunate Folk': Essays on Mental Health Treatment 1863–1992, co-edited with Jane Thomson (Otago University Press, 2002)
• Communities of Women: Historical Perspectives, co-edited with Dorothy Page (Otago University Press, 2002)
• At Home in New Zealand: Houses, History, People (Bridget Williams Books, 2000)
• Women in History 2: Essays on Women in New Zealand, co-edited with Margaret Tennant and Charlotte Macdonald (Allen & Unwin, 1992)
• Abortion in England 1900–1967 (Croom Helm, 1988)
• Women in History: Essays on European Women in New Zealand, co-edited with Margaret Tennant and Charlotte Macdonald (Allen & Unwin, 1986)

Honours and awards

In 2017, Brookes' book A History of New Zealand Women won the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award in the Illustrated Non-Fiction category.

In the 2018 New Year Honours, Brookes was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to historical research and women.