Academic Subject Adviser (History)
Māori Students' Liaison Officer
Ngāi Tahu, Ngāi Te Ruahikihiki, Ngāti Māmoe
Contact details
Room 2S4, Arts 1 (Burns) Building
Tel +64 3 479 8462
Email angela.wanhalla@otago.ac.nz
Academic qualifications
2005: PhD University of Canterbury
2001: MA University of Canterbury
1999: BA(Hons) University of Canterbury
Research interests
Angela 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.
Courses taught
- HIST 107 New Zealand in the World from the 18th Century
- HIST 234 Crime, Shame and Scandal in New Zealand
- HIST 242 Histories of Crime and Punishment
- HIST 246 Activist Histories: Contesting Settler Colonialism
Areas of research supervision
New Zealand history, Māori, Pacific and Indigenous history, women’s and feminist history, environmental history, colonial history, history of the family.
Publications
Wanhalla, A. (2023). Of love and war: Pacific brides of World War II. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 252p. Authored Book - Research
Wanhalla, A., Christie, S., Paterson, L., Webb, R., & Newman, E. (2024). Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori home front during the Second World War. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 282p. Authored Book - Research
Wanhalla, A. (2013). Matters of the heart: A history of interracial marriage in New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 231p. Authored Book - Research
Ruru, J., Wanhalla, A., & Wikaira, J. (Eds.). (2025). Books of mana: 180 Māori-authored books of significance. Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press, 255p. Edited Book - Research
Paterson, L., & Wanhalla, A. (2017). He Reo Wāhine: Māori women's voices from the nineteenth century. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 372p. Authored Book - Research