By Roselyn Fauth
I was researching women connected with national recognition when I came across Diana Unwin... at first, the headline facts seemed straightforward. She was born in South Canterbury, attended Timaru Girls’ High School, studied women’s factory work, became a nurse, supported peace and anti-nuclear causes, preserved important records and established the Grace Memorial Trust.
Her most lasting legacy was helping create the Diana Unwin Chair in Restorative Justice, giving researchers and practitioners a permanent base to ask some very difficult questions: who was harmed, who is responsible, and what might repair look like?
But that was not the clue that pulled me in... a telegram. In 1935, Diana’s mother sent one to Timaru Girls’ High School wishing her luck in a sporting event. What was the event? Did she win? And how did a schoolgirl in Timaru become linked with a national legacy of peace, justice and repair?
Well, the catalogue does not tell us.
But suddenly the woman whose name now belongs to a national centre for restorative practice had a clear South Canterbury connection.
The next clue was a swimming certificate. In 1938, the New Zealand Amateur Swimming Association issued a certificate of merit to “Diana Unwin of Timaru Girls’ High School” for swimming 880 yards/a little over 800 metres. The certificate does not prove that the earlier telegram was connected with swimming. It is tempting to join those dots, but that would still be a guess.
What the two records do confirm is that Diana attended Timaru Girls’ High School during the 1930s and took part in school sport. I have not found a statement in which Diana credits TGHS with her later achievements. We should not invent one for her. For now, the school belongs in her story because she was there, not because we can prove exactly how it shaped her.
The unidentified sporting event remains one of the loose threads.
Following the trail back to Orari
The photographic records offered another local clue.
An album held by the Alexander Turnbull Library contains photographs of the Unwin family at Orari and Timaru in 1923 and 1924, including Diana as an infant. Other family photographs show her during childhood and record members of the Unwin family swimming in a river.
I have not yet examined the original album, so I cannot describe expressions, relationships or scenes beyond the Library’s catalogue information. A catalogue entry confirms that an image exists and gives us a way into the collection. It does not give us permission to decide what the people in the photograph were thinking or feeling. Even so, the photographs firmly connect Diana’s early family story with Orari and Timaru.
The national name was becoming local, as a young historian was looking at women’s work
The next part of the trail led to the University of Otago. A contemporary report of the university’s 1945 graduation records Diana Mary Unwin receiving first-class honours in history.
The Hocken Collections identifies her 1944 MA Honours thesis as: Women in N.Z. Industry, with special reference to factory industry and conditions in Dunedin. The thesis remains listed as a useful source for researchers studying women’s factory work and industrial conditions.
That caught my attention... in her early twenties, Diana was looking for women inside an industrial history more often told through production, employers and economic growth. Her subject was not simply factories. It was women’s place and conditions within them.
It would be easy to present this as the beginning of a perfectly continuous life devoted to social justice. Lives are rarely that tidy, and the evidence does not allow us to draw such a straight line. What we can say is that women’s employment and working conditions were serious subjects of Diana’s historical research by 1944.
A nurse among peace and anti-nuclear networks
The National Library later described Diana as a Wellington Hospital staff nurse who was active in peace and anti-nuclear issues.
The surviving papers give us a glimpse of that work. Correspondence, notices and meeting minutes collected by Diana between 1985 and 1990 form part of the Wellington Peace Forum Network records. The Library also holds papers from Nurses for Nuclear Disarmament, including newsletters, membership documents, correspondence and annual reports. Diana donated parts of the collection in 1991 and 2005.
These records do not tell the story of Diana alone. They preserve the work of nurses, organisers, letter writers, campaigners and members concerned about nuclear weapons and peace. By ensuring that the papers reached a public archive, Diana helped protect the evidence of a much wider movement.
That is a practical form of community contribution. Future researchers cannot study volunteer action, public protest or changing attitudes if the minutes, newsletters and correspondence have disappeared.
A Trust established in 1992
The next firm date in the records is 1992. That was the year Diana established the Grace Memorial Trust. The Trust’s records are now held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. The collection includes annual reports, financial papers, minutes, correspondence and a photograph covering the period from 1992 to 2020.
I have not yet examined those two boxes, so for that reason, this story does not try to list every organisation the Trust supported or explain Diana’s private motivations. What is clearly documented is that the Grace Memorial Trust became an important partner in establishing the Diana Unwin Chair in Restorative Justice.
What does restorative justice mean?
Restorative justice asks what harm occurred, who was affected, who holds responsibility and what may help put matters right. In the New Zealand court system, it may include a voluntary meeting involving the person harmed, the person responsible, support people and a trained facilitator.
It is not simply a friendly conversation or an easy alternative to accountability.
The process requires preparation, skilled facilitation and careful attention to safety.
Restorative practice is also used beyond criminal courts, including in schools, workplaces, public agencies and healthcare settings.
Diana did not create restorative justice. Nor did she personally deliver the research and programmes later associated with the university Chair that carries her name. Her role it seems to me was different, as she helped give the work somewhere to grow.
Building a place for knowledge to continue
The Diana Unwin Chair in Restorative Justice was established in January 2014 through a partnership involving the Grace Memorial Trust, Victoria University of Wellington and a number of government and community partners. The university states that the Chair was established in recognition of Diana’s philanthropic commitment to restorative justice, peace and social wellbeing.
The Chair now leads Te Ngāpara Centre for Restorative Practice. The Centre brings together researchers, evaluators, practitioners and public organisations. It supports teaching, research and the practical development of restorative approaches.
This is where Diana’s legacy becomes easier to see.
A short-term grant may fund one conference, report or programme.
A continuing Chair can retain expertise, train others, evaluate practice and respond when new work is needed.
Diana did not undertake all of that work herself.
She helped make the structure possible.
When people harmed by surgical mesh needed to be heard
One example came in 2019, five years after Diana’s death. The Ministry of Health commissioned a team from the Diana Unwin Chair to undertake a restorative process with New Zealanders affected by surgical mesh. More than 600 people shared their experiences.
The process recorded physical, emotional, financial and relational harm. It also documented the loss of trust experienced by people who felt they had not been heard or believed by the health system. The Ministry later committed to 19 actions in response.
This work belongs first to the people who lived with the harm and chose to speak about it. It also belongs to the advocates, including Mesh Down Under, and to the researchers and facilitators who designed and carried out the process. It is not Diana’s personal achievement. What it shows is what an established centre, supported over time, was able to do when a difficult national issue demanded more than a conventional review.
That is the community impact of institution-building. The funder does not perform every later action. She helps ensure that the knowledge, relationships and skilled people are there when the work is needed.
A South Canterbury echo
Restorative justice also has a practical presence in South Canterbury. The Ministry of Justice currently lists Safer Mid Canterbury as the restorative-justice provider for the Timaru, Ashburton and Oamaru District Courts.
There is no evidence of a direct funding connection between this local service and Diana’s Trust, and none should be implied, but I think this can be a reminder that restorative justice is not only an academic subject discussed in Wellington.
It is work being carried out in the district where Diana’s own story began... and the evidence Diana left behind.
Diana donated family papers and photographs to the Alexander Turnbull Library over a number of years.
The collection includes letters, postcards, notebooks, photographs and family records connected with Diana and other members of the Unwin family.
In 2007, she also took part in a two-session oral-history interview about growing up during the 1920s and 1930s.
The recording is restricted, and public use requires permission (a work in progress to gain access so I have not listened to it, so I have not quoted Diana or claimed to know what she thought about her South Canterbury childhood).
The interview may eventually answer some of the questions raised by the telegram.
- Did she talk about Timaru Girls’ High School?
- Did she remember the swimming certificate?
- Did she explain how history, nursing, peace work and philanthropy came together in her life?
For now, those remain questions rather than facts.
Returning to the telegram
I began with a name in a catalogue. A telegram sent to a girl at Timaru Girls’ High School led to a swimming certificate, photographs from Orari, a thesis about women’s industrial work, peace-movement papers, a charitable Trust and a university centre concerned with harm and repair. The history hunt is not complete.
I still do not know what sporting event Diana’s mother was writing about... I have not listened to Diana’s oral history or worked through the Grace Memorial Trust files, there may be further South Canterbury connections waiting in school magazines, letters and meeting records.
But there is already enough to see her impact.
Diana Unwin helped preserve the records of peace and anti-nuclear organising. She established the Grace Memorial Trust, through that Trust, she helped give restorative-justice research, teaching and professional practice a continuing institutional home.
That did not make every later project hers... it made more work possible, and that is how a telegram addressed to a Timaru schoolgirl opened the door to a much larger story.
The hunt continues
I am still looking for:
the sporting event mentioned in the 1935 telegram
Diana’s own memories of Timaru Girls’ High School
further contemporary records of her South Canterbury life
the early Grace Memorial Trust records
permission to listen to and, where appropriate, quote her oral history
History hunts do not always finish with every question answered.
Sometimes the honest result is a story strong enough to share, together with a clear map of where to look next.