New Zealand historian and academic (born 1939)
Elizabeth Mary Isichei (née Allo; born 22 March 1939) is a New Zealand author, historian and academic.[1][2]
Early life, family and education
Isichei was born Elizabeth Mary Allo in Tauranga, New Zealand, on 22 March 1939, the daughter of Albert (an agricultural scientist) and Lorna Allo.[2][3] She was educated at Tauranga College, and attained the highest marks in New Zealand in the 1955 university entrance scholarship examinations.[4] She went on to study at the University of Canterbury, from where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960 and won a senior university scholarship.[5][6] She then completed a Master of Arts with first-class honours in history at Victoria University of Wellington in 1961.[2] Her honours thesis formed the basis of her book, Political Thinking and Social Experience, published in 1964.[7] She won a Commonwealth Scholarship and, after a brief period as a temporary assistant lecturer in history at the University of Canterbury, undertook doctoral studies at Nuffield College, Oxford.[8][9] Her DPhil thesis, completed in 1967, was titled Quakers and society in Victorian England.[10]
At Oxford, Allo met Peter Isichei, a chemical pathologist. The couple became engaged in 1963,[11] and married on 23 July 1964, going on to have five children.[2][9]
Academic career
Elizabeth Isichei was a professor in the Department of History at the University of Jos in Nigeria from 1976, and was general editor for Jos Oral History and Literature Texts.[2] She has said that having both a family and career "would not have been possible if my husband had not gone to any lengths to help and encourage me".[9] She was a visiting fellow at the University of Canterbury in 1984,[9] and in 1992 was appointed a professor of religious studies at the University of Otago.[12][13] On her retirement from Otago in 2006, she was accorded the title of professor emeritus.[13]
Her works and books are centred on Christianity in Africa and the history of Nigeria particularly the Igbo people,[14] including a biography of Michael Tansi, the first Nigerian Trappist monk.[9] She also wrote on contemporary developments in New Zealand Catholicism, and on the religious meanings of Colin McCahon's art.[15]
In 1992, Isichei was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Canterbury.[13][16] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1997, but no longer holds that fellowship.[17]
Poetry
Before going to Oxford in 1962, Allo established a reputation as a poet, with her work appearing in publications including the Listener, Landfall, Comment and the Poetry Yearbook.[18] She returned to poetry in the 1990s, and her poems were published in the Listener, Winterspin, and various anthologies,[18] as well as her own published collections.[19]
Later life
Isichei's husband, Peter Isichei, died in 2023.[20]
