Bronwyn Labrum's Blog

Some gorgeous objects from my new book are available to view on the Te Papa Channel with links to the collection and further information. Enjoy! click here Advertisements

Like many people at this time of year, I am muttering to myself with increasing urgency ‘where did the year go?’ Well, I have a good excuse for the lack of posts since January. All year and right up to last week, when I have been doing more writing for the online Te Papa channel, I […]

Happy New Year! May 2015 be a productive research and writing year for you. At the end of last year I read a lot of end-of-2014 posts which reflected on the writer’s year and already this month I have read some scary post about writing planned for 2015 (Pat Thomson’s ‘A whole lot of writing […]

The third post in a series of tips and strategies around academic writing. It is the last day of my regular, blissful writing retreat. It is finally like summer, warm but windy. The scent of roses (and chocolate) fills our writing room. Last night, we had our regular reading aloud session, when one member nominates […]

In May I was invited to give a paper at conference examining anniversaries and this blog post continues a discusssion of that paper in a previous posting. The centenary of women’s suffrage in 1993 In 1993 the Suffrage Centennial Year Trust was established to mark the centenary of New Zealand becoming the first country where […]

In May I was invited to give a paper at conference examining anniversaries, hosted at Palmerston North’s museum Te Manawa , who organised it with PHANZA, the Professional Historian’s Association of Aotearoa New Zealand and the W. H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy at Massey University. Although we are in the midst of the centenary of […]

 The third post in a series of tips and strategies around academic writing. What is the difference between a pomodoro and a pear? And how does a grape count? These slightly bizarre questions were thrown up during my recent writing retreat. But we were jesting in earnest: pomodoros, pears and grapes are all techniques to […]

The reaction to my last post on writing retreats was so positive — thank you everyone for your likes, retweets and reads—I thought I would continue the vibe and focus on writing groups. I have been part of a writing group for three and half years now and it is a key part of my […]

I am writing this from a desk looking over Lake Taupo, in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand. A well-stoked fire is roaring and six women are writing with me as we share space in a large hall. All is companionable silence. This is the tenth year I have been coming to […]

I was delighted to be a keynote speaker at the recent Costume and Textile Assocation of New Zealand’s annual conference. In a previous post, I reviewed the conference and asked whether it was time to rethink ‘The Home Front’. In this post, I want to more directly write about the issues I raised in my […]