Otago University Press imprint: 38 books

This book is a history of the British Enderby settlement on the Auckland Islands 1849–52 and its associated whaling venture. Isolation, a stormswept climate, unproductive soil, inexperienced crews, drunkenness and above all an unexpected shortage of whales meant the raw colony ran into trouble and...

From 2003 to 2007 Nairn, Higgins and Sligo investigated what life was like for ninety-three young people coming to adulthood in the wake of Rogernomics. The authors conducted two interviews, one in participants' final year of high school and another twelve months later. The authors bring the lives,...

The period 1995 to 2004 was the UN's International Decade of World Indigenous Peoples. This reflected the increasing organisation of indigenous peoples around a commonality of concerns, needs and ambitions. In both New Zealand and Canada, these politics challenge the colonial structures that social and political systems are built upon.

Promoting Health in Aotearoa New Zealand is the first comprehensive text on health promotion in New Zealand. Primarily written for students, practitioners and policy makers in the health sector, it will be of interest also to those promoting health in Maori, Pacific Island and other NGOs and to those...

From electro-convulsive therapy to epilepsy, from criminal lunacy to community care, Unfortunate Folks: Essays on Mental Health Treatment, 1863-1992, opens windows on to the history of mental health treatment in New Zealand.

Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns focuses on how Pacific Island peoples—Oceanians—think about a range of journeys near and far: their meanings, motives, and implications. In addition to addressing human mobility in various island locales, these essays deal with the interconnections of culture, identity,...

The Depression of the 1930s was a defining period in New Zealand history. It had its own vocabulary – swaggers and sugarbags, relief work and sustenance, the Queen Street riots and special constables – that was all too familiar to those who lived through that tumultuous decade. But one generation's...

In The Radio Room, Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen travels space and time, throwing 'thought-lines' from her present-day corner of the world to the ancient Celtic islands of her ancestors ('On a cliff-top above screeching gulls I stand still thinking backwards, antipodean poet grafted from ancient taproot...

Maurice Gee's fiction for younger readers blends exciting stories with serious issues. Told through a range of genres, from fantasy to realism, adventure to science fiction, mysteries, psychological thrillers and gangster stories, they offer a distinctive body of work that shows New Zealand to children...

This book tells the story of the case of Zimbabwean-born New Zealand resident George Gwaze, twice charged and twice acquitted of the rape and murder of his 10-year-old adopted niece, Charlene Makaza. When Charlene was found unconscious one morning, gasping for breath, with a high fever and lying in...