Judith Binney

Dame Judith Mary Caroline Binney DNZM FRSNZ (née Musgrove, 1 July 1940 – 15 February 2011) was a New Zealand historian, writer and Emerita Professor of History at the University of Auckland. Her work focussed on religion in New Zealand, especially the Māori Ringatū religion founded by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and continued by Rua Kenana. She also wrote extensively on the history of Ngāi Tūhoe.

Binney was born in Australia in 1940. She graduated with a first-class honours degree in history from the University of Auckland in 1965, and started work at the university as a lecturer in the History Department the next year. She retired as Professor of History in 2004. She wrote biographies of both Te Kooti and Kenana, as well as a book on Kenana's followers, and another on Pākehā missionary Thomas Kendall. With Judith Bassett and Erik Olssen she wrote People and the Land, a history of New Zealand aimed at readers of high-school level.

For services to historical research, she was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 1997 New Year Honours. In the 2006 New Year Honours she was promoted to Distinguished Companion of the same order. In 2009 she accepted redesignation as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government.

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