Sharing a love of historical research
Throughout her long university career, Professor Charlotte Macdonald has relished watching her students experience the excitement of historical research and discovery. As a parting gift she has created a History Master’s scholarship in the name of a woman with a colourful life story.
For over 30 years Professor Charlotte Macdonald has been a member of the History staff at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, becoming a professor in 2009.
To mark this association, she has established a scholarship to add to the University’s postgraduate History programme—a programme that combines a vibrant research culture with access to the best research archives in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This scholarship will be an addition to the campaign that Charlotte initiated in 2019 which successfully raised funds for five new History Master’s scholarships, thanks to wonderful support from our History alumni, benefactors, and supporters.
Charlotte announced the scholarship at her ‘metamorphosis’ party on 4 December and is inviting former students, staff, and history lovers to join together to donate a further $15,000 on top of the $15,000 she has contributed. She hopes that the scholarship can be offered at the end of 2024 for study in 2025.
Charlotte notes that the costs of postgraduate study are challenging, and practical support in the form of scholarship funding can have a huge impact on student success.
“The current funding crisis at New Zealand’s universities cannot be allowed to impede the continuing scholarship of our most motivated students.”
The award is named after another Charlotte whose recent resurgence as an intriguing historical figure serves as fascinating subject matter for Professor Macdonald, a historian with interests spanning the histories of Aotearoa New Zealand, of women and gender, of the cultural history of sport, body, and spectating, and in empires and colonies.
Charlotte Badger, whom the Charlotte Badger MA Scholarship in History is named after, was a convict, mother, pirate, and adventurer. Her audacity defies any view that women took a passive part in history. But what we don’t know about her also enables much invention and intrigue.
Charlotte Badger’s life (c.1788–1850) is sparsely known but what is known has excited much imagining. Her revised entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography says Charlotte was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire in 1778 and was convicted of stealing from her employer’s home at the age of 18. While breaking into someone’s house carried the death sentence, she was instead sentenced to seven years transportation, much of which she served in gaol before being transported to New South Wales.
On completing her sentence, she boarded a ship called the Venus that was carrying supplies to Tasmania, in the company of a child and another woman named Catharine Hegerty. While the captain was away, the ship’s crew mutinied and sailed to Kororāreka (Russell) in the Bay of Islands (where she is remembered at the Paihia eatery Charlotte’s Kitchen). It is unknown whether Charlotte was actively involved in the mutiny or merely present, but the legend has grown to the extent that some have her leading it.
On arrival, the two women were given refuge by local Māori. Charlotte was later recorded as being rescued and sailed to Sydney where she married a soldier, had another child, and was accused of stealing a blanket, before vanishing from the records.
Jennifer Ashton’s book Thief, Convict, Pirate, Wife: the many histories of Charlotte Badger (2022) presents a wonderful exposition of the many lives Charlotte Badger’s fleeting presence in the archives has provoked.
The flurry of interest in Charlotte Badger is an example of the expansive social and cultural history that Professor Macdonald has embraced over her career.
Professor Macdonald has specialised in asking questions about women and gender. Her study of young working-class women who were recruited as assisted emigrants by New Zealand’s provincial governments in the 1850s–60s to be domestic servants led to her book A Woman of Good Character (1990).
Several books on gender and women’s history followed, illuminating women’s lives through the letters and diaries that were vital lines of connection in nineteenth- and twentieth-century New Zealand. Among many distinguished appointments, Charlotte has twice been President of the New Zealand Historical Association and recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the Academy of Fellows at the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi.
Having supervised nearly 50 Master’s and PhD theses, Charlotte says she derives immense pleasure in seeing students ‘infected’ by the history bug.
“I love to see students producing large and often significant pieces of new research they had not imagined themselves capable of undertaking.
“History never stands still. New questions, new approaches, and new discussions constantly prompt the pursuit of new knowledge.
“The excitement of research is always there, and it is that which continues to drive my own interest and what I would like to pass on to future students.”