Miss Elizabeth Wilson awarded PhD and her thesis placed on the Humanities Divisional List of Exceptional Doctoral Theses.

We are delighted to celebrate and congratulate Miss Elizabeth Wilson on being awarded her PhD from the University of Otago this month. Miss Wilson was Principal of Columba College from 1981 to 2014. I was thrilled to be part of a small group of Year 13 students who visited Miss Wilson this week to present her with flowers and to hear about her pathway since her retirement when we were in Year 7. 

Miss Wilson explained to us that after she retired from Columba College at the end of 2014, she realised that an absorbing and stimulating challenge would be needed to fill the gap that Columba was going to leave in her life. The idea of postgraduate study attracted her, and despite her previous degrees being in the European languages of French and German, the study of English literature, specifically New Zealand literature, appealed. Miss Wilson acknowledged the excellent advice she received from the University to undertake a Diploma for Graduates with all seven of the requisite papers in English, and said that they brought her up to speed with the significant changes that had taken place in literary theory and analysis since she last studied English at Canterbury University in the 1960s. She began her study at the University of Otago by completing the Diploma for Graduates in 2016 and was awarded the Walter Scott Scholarship in English and the Alan Horsman Prize. 

Following completion of the DipGrad, the University of Otago approved her application to undertake a PhD and her thesis proposal, and awarded her a Doctoral Scholarship. And thus, in March 2017, three years, one month and twenty days of absorbing work began, culminating in the submission of her thesis on the 20th of April 2020, with the Viva conducted via Zoom in July, and graduation in December. To the College’s delight, Miss Wilson’s thesis has been placed on the Humanities Divisional List of Exceptional Doctoral Theses. This List comprises only those Doctoral candidates whose research is assessed by all three examiners as being of an exceptional standard in every respect – research content, originality, quality of expression, and accuracy of presentation – and is amongst the top 10% of theses examined. 

It was fascinating to hear about Miss Wilson’s study and her thesis, “The Settler Colonial Family as a Site of Trauma for Women in Selected Novels by New Zealand Women Writers.” The thesis examined six twentieth-century novels by Jane Mander, Jean Devanny, Robin Hyde, Fiona Kidman, Elspeth Sandys (a Columba College Old Girl, Head Prefect and Dux in 1957), and Kirsty Gunn that depict the settler colonial family as a site of trauma from a female-gendered perspective. 

Miss Wilson explained that “in their enactment of the processes of remembering and narrating what has been occluded or silenced, the novels call attention to the settler colonial past and the persistence of settler colonialism’s ideological and material structures and norms into the postcolonial period. Drawing on structural, non-event-based trauma theories which encompass relational, intergenerational, cumulative, and insidious trauma, the research provided insights into the interrelationships between the trauma experienced by women in the affective intimacies of the family and the wider sociocultural and historical context”. 

Miss Wilson expressed how deeply grateful she is for the opportunity to have undertaken a PhD, and her appreciation of the support and guidance she received from her two supervisors and the English Department at Otago. 

She said that “learning is truly life-long, and I hope that sharing a little of my experience might be encouraging to present students of Columba”. 

We congratulate Miss Wilson again and thank her for sharing her journey with us. With all our best wishes, Miss Wilson, as you celebrate this special graduation!