Writing Mr Ward’s map
On Wednesday 3rd December 2025 at the National Library, historian Elizabeth Cox spoke about her new book Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington...
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New Zealand History
Podcast weblog for seminars presented at Manatū Taonga - the Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Episodes
20 of 92 episodes
Making ‘A Rather Queer Cuba Street’ with AI
On 6th August 2025 at National Library, Gareth Watkins and Dr Roger Smith from PrideNZ and Walk Tours NZ presented their work using off-the-...
Rewind: The Craft of Historical Storytelling in Podcasts
In this Public History Talk recorded at the National Library on 4 June 2025, podcast producers William Ray (RNZ) and Kirsten Johnstone (Pops...
The financial colonisation of Aotearoa
In this podcast, Catherine Comyn reframes the financial colonisation of Aotearoa — a history of the joint stock company, a speculative Londo...
The pain in Spain: Writing Spanish Civil War history in Aotearoa
In this podcast, Mark Derby talks about his recent book Frontline Surgeon: New Zealand Medical Pioneer Douglas Jolly, published by Massey Un...
Whakarongo ki ngā Taonga Tuku Iho: Listening to Taonga Held in French Museums
Dr Lisa Renard has a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology / Museum Studies Docteure en anthropologie sociale et culturelle / Muséograph...
Small stories of colonisation: An uncomfortable settler family history
In this podcast, Professor Richard Shaw whose great-grandfather took part in the 1881 invasion of Parihaka pā and farmed land taken from Tar...
An Open Conversation on a Secret History
The new book Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956 by Richard S Hill and Steven Loveridge (Auckland University Press,...
Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand’: Jared Davidson
Forced labour haunts the streets we walk today and the spaces we take for granted. From 1814 onwards, the unfree work of prisoners was used...
Adoption: From severance and secrecy to connection and openness
In this month's Public History Talk, the authors of two recently published books discussed the profound impact of closed stranger adoption i...
Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay
Paul Diamond's book, Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay, examines the startling ‘Whanganui Affair’ of 1920, when the mayor Charles...
Te Motunui Epa – making history from the underground
For more than 150 years, five carved panels that once formed the back wall of a pātaka, slept in a small swamp just north of Waitara. The ca...
‘An overview of New Zealand’s radical right tradition’: Matthew Cunningham
In seeking to understand the terrorist attacks of March 2019, several commentators observed the similarities with the murder of an elderly C...
Archives in Place: Deep Histories in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
In this podcast, Dr Lucy Mackintosh discusses aspects of her recently published book, Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Au...
Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station: Redmer Yska and Cherie Jacobson in conversation
Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand author of international renown. Her short stories and poetry have been translated into more than 25 la...
Musicians, Myths and Manifestos
What can popular music tell us about a country and its culture? As the 2023 Lilburn Research Fellow, Nick Bollinger is looking at ways in wh...
Solidarity and the Right to Strike
Cybèle Locke’s recently published biography of Bill Andersen, Comrade, examines labour activism, communism and social change, from the 1930s...
Making Space: A history of New Zealand women in architecture
Brilliant, hardworking and creative, women architects have made many significant contributions to the built environment, creativity and comm...
New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) is a remarkable organisation that has represented New Zealand for more than 75 years. A new book, New...
A Biography of Lake Tūtira
This talk sketches Lake Tūtira’s history from formation to today. Historian Jonathan West will follow in the traces of Herbert Guthrie Smith...