Rate My Professor Ondine Godtschalk

Ondine Godtschalk is the Kaiwhakahaere Rangahau Matua, or Senior Research Administrator, in the Research and Enterprise Office at the University of Otago in Dunedin. In this role, she is part of the operations team that provides administrative, financial, and IT support for research activities. The office, led by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, drives the university's strategic imperative for research excellence, supports funding opportunities, fosters partnerships with government, NGOs, and businesses, manages grant applications and research contracts, and ensures adherence to high ethical standards guided by Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Godtschalk assists research advisers across divisions including the Business School, Humanities, Sciences, Health Sciences, and campuses in Christchurch and Wellington.

Godtschalk has a strong academic foundation in history and interdisciplinary studies. She completed postgraduate work in public policy and musicology at Victoria University of Wellington, culminating in a thesis entitled 'Love's Desires and the Pleasures of Bacchus: the airs of Jean Sicard (fl. 1666-1683).' She earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Otago with an unpublished dissertation on New Zealand-made Health Education Films from 1952 to 1962. She graduated from the History Programme at the University of Waikato, affiliating with its History Programme around 2011. Previously, as of 2013, she served part-time as a research assistant in the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing at Massey University.

Her scholarly contributions focus on colonial-era health practices and biosecurity. In collaboration with Catharine Coleborne, she co-authored 'Colonial Families and Cultures of Health: Glimpses of Illness and Domestic Medicine in Private Records in New Zealand and Australia, 1850–1910,' published in the Journal of Family History in 2013. The article utilizes published and unpublished private family writings to explore how European settler families managed sickness and health, highlighting gendered lay health care practices and emotional dimensions within domestic spaces. She also reviewed Gavin McLean and Tim Shoebridge's 'Quarantine! Protecting New Zealand at the Border' in 2011 for the Australian & Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network, providing a detailed analysis of New Zealand's biosecurity history from 1840, covering human, plant, and animal quarantine measures, technological advancements, and international trade influences. Additionally, she contributed a note on health education films to Social History of Medicine in 2011.