Professor Angela Wanhalla

Angela Wanhalla (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāi Te Ruahikihiki, Ngāti Māmoe) specialises in Māori, New Zealand, colonial, environmental and women's history. She has published extensively on the history of gender, race and marriage in New Zealand and the Pacific. This includes Matters of the Heart (2013), a national study of interracial marriage in New Zealand covering 200-years of history, research on Māori women and shore whaling in early southern New Zealand, and a collaborative project on the social impacts of American servicemen in the South Pacific during World War II, published as Mothers’ Darlings (2016). With support from a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (2013-2018), Angela researched and wrote Of Love and War (2023), about the New Zealand and Pacific war brides who married American servicemen and settled in the United States.

Angela has continued to undertake research on World War II. From 2019-2023 she co-led a collaborative Marsden-funded project with Emeritus Professor Lachy Paterson (Te Tumu) and Dr Sarah Christie on the Māori Home Front during the Second World War. With Dr Claire Macindoe she is currently investigating the relationship between war service and health, focusing on Māori servicemen’s access to medical care during and after the Second World War.