Judith Huntsman Tokelau recordings

Judith Weber Huntsman was born in Chicago, Illinois in August 1935. She attended Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, and then Brown University, Rhode Island, graduating with a M.A. in Anthropology in 1963 and a PhD from Bryn Mawr in 1969.

Huntsman first visited Tokelau in 1967 to undertake 12 months fieldwork for her PhD thesis 'Kin and coconuts on a Polynesian atoll', which examined the socio-economic organisation of Nukunonu. Working primarily in Atafu and Nukunonu, she undertook a further 12 months fieldwork in 1969 and 1970 followed by shorter visits in 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991 and 1997. Huntsman described her fieldwork as recording slices of time which together document a period of great change. She has written widely about Tokelau, including 'Tokelau: a historical ethnography', written with Antony Hooper in 1996, and 'The future of Tokelau: decolonising agendas, 1975–2006', written with Kelihiano Kalolo and published in 2007.

In 1970, Huntsman joined the staff of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland. In 2001 she retired as an associate professor and took up an appointment as Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in Social Anthropology. She has served on the council of the Polynesian Society, and since 1975 has been an editor of its journal the Journal of the Polynesian Society several times.