Author: Daisy Farthing

Sunrise: 21st February 1930
Sunset: 17th September 2025

Kua hinga te tōtara o Te Waonui a Tāne (A mighty tōtara from the forest of Tāne has fallen).

Kate Edger Foundation has farewelled one of our beloved matriarchs, Dame Joan Metge. New Zealand’s pioneering social anthropologist passed away last month in her 95th year.

Revered as one of the first Pākeha scholars to give voice to Māori culture and society from Māori perspective, she dedicated her life to bridging the gap between Māori and Pākeha world views to facilitate greater understanding, compassion and social equality.

Dame Joan’s lifelong association with Kate Edger Foundation (then the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women) began when she was awarded the NZFUW Fellowship from 1955 to 1957 to fund her PhD at the London School of Economics. Notable international postgraduate study at a time when females achieving excellence in the academic world was rare and far from easy.

She would often recount to us the story of how she boarded the ship Rangitane from Wellington to England with a whole suitcase of research notebooks, not even knowing how she would fully fund her years in the UK, and received news of the award by cable while on the journey.

Dame Joan always remained involved with our foundation, giving back wherever she could to the organisation that enabled her academic dreams as a young woman in her twenties. She served as a committee member, awards coordinator, a member of our awards selection panels and attended our award ceremonies into her 90s.

Acknowledging her lifetime of achievements, we founded the Post-Doctoral Award in honour of Dame Joan Metge. Funded since 2006 by our social enterprise The Graduation Place, this award grants $16,000 biannually. It supports female Doctoral graduates to establish their research careers in the Humanities and Social Sciences for an independent, limited-term research project.

Over the twenty years of this scholarship, over $496,000 has been given, with 31 research projects funded. As one of the few Post-Doctoral research funding opportunities available in Aotearoa New Zealand for early-career researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences, this scholarship is an important stepping-stone for female academics needing pathways from their Doctoral research into institutional research positions.

We will proudly continue her award as part of her legacy.

“It felt profound that the next Post-Doctoral Award in honour of Dame Joan Metge winner was chosen by our selection panel on Suffrage Day this year, just two days after Dame Joan’s passing,” says Kate Edger Foundation and The Graduation Place General Manager, Nina Tomaszyk.

“The recipient is Dr Imogen Morris from the University of Auckland’s School of Music. The selection panel chose her to support her vision to reassert the role of music in society through recorder performance and teaching. Dame Joan had a great love of music; we know she would have loved that.”

Among many prestigious accolades in her lifetime, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1987, received an honorary Doctor of Letters / Literature from the University of Auckland in 2001 and held a seat on the Waitangi National Trust Board.

Dame Joan’s love of writing and research excellence led to her having many significant books and articles demystifying Māori culture, society and history for mainstream audiences published. Several of which became foundation textbooks for tertiary students and references for academics across New Zealand.

Over a cuppa, Dame Joan Metge would famously draw on her favourite Māori huahuatau – the metaphor of the relationship among New Zealanders to taura whiri or plaited rope. She would say, “A rope becomes stronger with many different strands when woven in a way to work together, in the same way we create a strong nation.”

She walked her talk! Her front door was always open. Our Kate Edger Foundation team witnessed firsthand the curiosity and self-belief she cultivated in our wāhine who worked alongside her. We were privileged to have spent time with her and help instigate the cataloguing of her extensive library in her final years.

It was rare to leave without a bundle of brilliant books to read, a handwritten booklist to research, and a gently delivered sprinkling of sagely advice.

“We loved and respected her astute mind, academic rigour, open heart and humility,” says Nina. Our whole team – including our board, many awardees and sponsor partners – feels immense gratitude for the life and example of Dame Joan Metge.”

Our nation’s biculturalism and our society’s multiculturalism owe much to her rope-weaving skills.