Judith A Bennett
An Australian who has lived in New Zealand since 1980, Judith A. Bennett is Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand where she teaches courses on Pacific Islands' history and environmental history. She first went to Solomon Islands in 1970 as a Master's student attached to the University of Hawaii and worked on the Tasi Mauri, the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal under the direction of Professors Murray Chapman and Peter Pirie, talking with village people to learn why they moved their villages.
She returned to Solomons in 1977 and spent months talking with old people on several islands about their experiences of the trading and plantation days before World War Two. A consequence of this and extensive archival research was the award-winning book, Wealth of the Solomons: a history of a Pacific Archipelago, Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1978, (Honolulu, 1987). In the late 1980s, working closely with Solomon Islands' teachers, she wrote two history texts for high schools. Judy then thought her Solomons work complete but the problems arising from commercial logging drew her back once again when in 1992 she was the inaugural Senior Visiting Fellow at the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education. Though her research was focussed on forest history she took time to make contact with Lloyd Maepeza Gina to see how she could help with the writing of his autobiography. Assisted by Khyla Russell, the initial work began on Vella La Vella. In 2000 her book, Pacific Forest: A History of Resource Control and contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1997, (Cambridge and Leiden) was published. Now that editing Journeys in a Small Canoe is complete she devotes her research time to writing a book to be titled "South Pacific Environment: Natives and Invaders in World War Two" and, in this, Solomon Islands and their people will also feature.
At home, Judy grows organic vegetables and roses and enjoys walking on the beach.
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