In this seminar I workshop my quest to research and write the story behind New Zealand’s famous feminist icon.  

A well-known project around the historical community, for nearly 40 years Tessa Malcolm gathered research on her great, great aunt, Kate Sheppard (1848-1934). Malcolm, however, passed on without completing her work and I am engaged in drawing upon her voluminous notes, photocopies and photographs, now gathered long ago and that appear as particular fragments of history that captured Malcolm’s imagination. My research necessarily involves getting to know Malcolm as well as Sheppard, peeling back and making sense of layers of notes made many years ago, checking footnotes in many diverse secondary sources, as well as adding new research that technological advances have enabled.  

This seminar discusses themes that are emerging, such as transnational feminisms, local context, Sheppard as a heroine, migrant identities, and the underlying importance of doing justice to Sheppard, and Malcolm, by writing a feminist biography.

Katie Pickles is Professor of History at the University of Canterbury. Her research examines heroism, intersectional identities and decolonisation. Her most recent book is Heroines in History: A Thousand Faces (Routledge, 2022), written during a Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand James Cook Research Fellowship.

Zoom only seminar:
Meeting ID: 849 0058 9945
Password: 630803
Join Zoom Meeting: bit.ly/BioWorkshop2022