Barbara Brookes

Barbara Lesley Brookes (born 1955) is a New Zealand historian and academic. She specialises in women's history and medical history, publishing both internationally and in New Zealand. She worked at the University of Otago for more than 35 years, and when she retired in mid-2020 was made Professor Emerita.

Biography Brookes completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Otago in 1976, then won scholarships to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she completed a master's degree (1978) and a PhD (1982). Her PhD thesis topic was abortion in England during the inter-war period.

A History of New Zealand Women Brookes' sole-authored publication, A History of New Zealand Women (Bridget Williams Books, 2016), won the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award in the Illustrated Non-Fiction category. The book represents over thirty years of research on the topic of New Zealand women's history (inaugurated by a 1986 volume Brookes co-edited with Margaret Tennant and Charlotte Macdonald, Women in History).

Marion Castree describes A History of New Zealand Women as "a superb New Zealand history through the perspective of women's lives and all they contributed to our comparatively short but intense experience in Aotearoa. . . . Beautifully illustrated and designed, this book will never date." Susanna Andrew, writing for noted.co.nz, says the book is "a brilliant examination of how we got to where we are now. […] Brookes has marked every change and shift with clarity and scholarly precision." Charlotte Paul, writing for the New Zealand Medical Journal, says that Brookes "weaves different perspectives of Māori and Pakeha lives into a tapestry that enriches our sense of what it is to be a New Zealander."

Publications Brookes' publications include:

Brookes (left) in 2018, after her investiture as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit by the governor-general, Dame Patsy ReddyIn the 2018 New Year Honours, Brookes was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to historical research and women.

In 2018 Brookes received the Humanities Aronui Medal from the Royal Society for her 'outstanding contribution to Humanities scholarship, reshaping the history of New Zealand by putting women at the centre of a substantial and internationally recognised body of scholarly work culminating in A History of New Zealand Women'. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2021.