Anushka Brooking née Perinpanayagam

Study of Religion fostered writing and critical-thinking skills that Anushka carried through to work in the Ministry of Education and beyond.

I decided to take Study of Religion in my last year of secondary school. Being from a Sri Lankan background, I was exposed to lots of different religious traditions, mainly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the faith of my own family. I understood that religion isn’t something simple; even in my own family there are people who have a strong Christian faith and also believe in reincarnation. I have always been fascinated by religion: the stories, the rituals, the beliefs, and the experience of something bigger than us—and how this all moves people to be and act in the world and to know and understand themselves and their relationships to their community and world.

My decision to do a Master of Arts in Study of Religion arose out of an Honours-level paper I wrote about Sri Lanka and the religious dimensions of the nationalist identities that developed there. This project pushed me in lots of ways. On a deeply personal level I felt I was discovering a piece of my own identity and history—and faith, too. On another level, the project (and my excellent supervisors) pushed me to think analytically and creatively. My writing also improved dramatically. These are the key skills I took into employment. The Study of Religion major allows you to confront conflicting points of view and to honour these points of view while trying to analyse them in a meaningful way. I use this skill in many arenas of my own life, including my last permanent role as senior operational policy analyst at the Ministry of Education in the reo Māori team. This team has historically led several innovative and groundbreaking pieces of work. I found I was constantly challenged to put words to things that hadn’t been articulated before. My work, like my study, required me to think laterally and creatively, ask good questions that elicited important information, and be persuasive and analytical—both in speaking and writing. Sometimes people have wildly different perspectives on an issue and I found myself having to get to the bottom of the core concern they were expressing. I then tried to figure out how we could address those core concerns to find a way forward.

I am currently doing some tutoring work while my children are still young. My Study of Religion lens helps me both with trying to understand how my students think and also helps with asking questions to elicit their current level of understanding of knowledge and to scaffold their learning. I also have skills to impart around how to think and write critically. These skills were all acquired through my Study of Religion degree and I am enormously grateful to be able to use them in my current work.