Dr Jenny Te Paa Daniel (Te Rarawa) is a theology undergraduate at the University of Auckland (becoming the first Maori in the world to obtain a university degree in theology). She holds a Master’s degree with Honours in Education from Auckland University and a PhD from the GTU in Berkeley, California, with a thesis on Race Politics and Theological Education. She has been awarded five international honorary doctorates, including one from her greatly esteemed and deeply respected school, EDS. In addition, she holds two prestigious Distinguished Alumni Awards from her respective alma maters.
She served for almost twenty-five years, first as a lecturer and then as Te Ahorangi (Principal) at St. John’s Anglican Theological College in Auckland. As the first Indigenous lay woman to hold such a leadership position anywhere in the worldwide Anglican Communion, she soon established herself as one of the Communion’s leading Indigenous women theological thinkers, writers and teachers. Over the past decade, she has worked as Te Mareikura (esteemed Indigenous scholar) and then as Acting Director of Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. She is currently appointed as Professor Emeritus at Hato Hoani/St. John’s Anglican Theological College, assisting its transition towards becoming one of the most progressive, inclusive, Indigenous-facing and visionary Anglican seminaries in the Communion.