My aunt, Dame Evelyn Stokes, or Aunt Evelyn as we called her, died a couple months back. I didn't know her very well, living in different countries and all, but I greatly enjoyed her hospitality on the rare occasion of a visit, and I think having an academic in the family (not the only one, an uncle on the other side has a faculty position at the same university she had, but she was first) probably made it easier for me to think that this was something I could do myself.

Anyway, I finally found a eulogy for her online — here it is. She apparently played a big role, bigger than I knew, both in the development of geography as an academic discipline in NZ and (in part through her service on the Waitangi Tribunal, which adjudicates Maori land claims) in Maori-Pakeha relations.