Mākereti Papakura, the first Indigenous woman to study at Oxford, to be awarded a posthumous degree

More than 100 years after she began her studies, Māori scholar, Mākereti Papakura, is to receive a posthumous degree from the University of Oxford. The announcement was made by the University’s School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography which in consultation with Mākereti’s family, applied to the University of Oxford’s Education Committee to request that she be posthumously awarded the degree of MPhil in Anthropology. 

Mākereti, who was born in 1873 in Aotearoa New Zealand, is believed to be the first Indigenous woman to matriculate to the University. She enrolled in 1922 to read Anthropology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and at the Society of Home Students, now St Anne’s College.

Her groundbreaking research explored the customs of her people of Te Arawa from a woman’s perspective. Both her scholarship and Indigenous worldview earned her the respect of several Oxford anthropologists at the time, including the first curator of the Pitt Rivers, Henry Balfour. Her work is celebrated by members of Māori communities and researchers worldwide. 

Mākereti died in 1930, just weeks before she was due to present her thesis. With the agreement of her family, Mākereti’s good friend, fellow Oxford anthropologist and Rhodes Scholar, T.K. Penniman, posthumously published her work, in a book titled The Old-Time Māori. It became the first ethnographic study published by a Māori author and is recognised as such by the New Zealand Royal Society. 

The application to posthumously award the degree was supported by St Anne’s College and the Pitt Rivers Museum, to which Mākereti and her family donated numerous artefacts and papers both during her lifetime and after her death. The initiative was led in part by Evie O’Brien, Atlantic Fellow for Social Equity and former Executive Director of the Atlantic Institute at the Rhodes Trust, Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and former Rhodes Scholar from Aotearoa and by Sir John Hood, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

Evie O’Brien, currently Chief Executive of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, said: 

‘I owe a great debt to Mākereti as she paved the way for Māori women in Oxford, including me. I had the honour of connecting more deeply with her life during my time at Rhodes Trust, culminating in the inaugural Mākereti Papakura lecture in 2022.....Despite her deep connection to her home and people in New Zealand, she requested to be buried in Oddington, Oxfordshire and bequeathed all of her cultural treasures and personal manuscripts to the Pitt Rivers Museum. From a cultural perspective, this was both the greatest gift and sacrifice – a true testament of how much she loved her life in Oxford. This recognition of her work and contribution is therefore truly special.’

The degree will be awarded at a ceremony in Oxford later this year which members of Mākereti’s family and the Māori community are expected to attend.

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