Helen Leggatt

My research background is in social history, specifically deathways and social attitudes towards disposal of the dead in New Zealand and across the Anglosphere. I specialise in recovering the lives, and deaths, of everyday people otherwise lost in the archives.

My PhD ‘Burning God’s Own: A Social History of Modern Cremation in New Zealand 1874-1946’ (2023) represents the first social history of modern cremation in New Zealand. . It explores the introduction of modern cremation to New Zealand with a focus on the technology’s reception and adoption through analysis of the people who were cremated. Methodologically complex, it combines quantitative and qualitative research resulting in a prosopographical overview (collective biography) unique to research in this area

I have substantial experience researching within historical archives – both off- and online. I enjoy building databases and implementing digital tools to explore large datasets. A recent ECR project retrieving MI7b propaganda in the Australasian press implemented the use of corpus linguistics techniques.

My course development and teaching experience has been at undergraduate level. Courses taught include revolutions and revolutionaries, history of criminology, Nazi Germany conformity and resistance, and Medieval studies. Several of these courses have been distance learning. I am involved in course development for the Faculty of Arts foundation course focusing on critical thinking and the evaluation and use of data and other sources.

I enjoy public speaking and have presented on several occasions including the Death and Culture III Conference (DACNET) at the University of York, UK (2020), the Canterbury Historical Association in October 2021, the New Zealand Cemetery and Crematoria Collective (NZCCC, 2022) and various internal seminars at the University of Canterbury. My background in senior marketing management, in the UK and Asia, has given me the communication, writing, and project management skills to effectively and engagingly communicate my research.

I am happy to be contacted with ideas for collaboration or short- and long-term research and writing contracts, or conference engagement.

Recent publications include:

Leggatt, Helen. ‘”Whither Shall We Send Our Son?”: A Prosopographical Analysis of Remittance Men in New Zealand’, The Graduate History Review vol. 9, no. 1 (2020), pp. 20-48.  https://doi.org/10.18357/ghr91202019344