Daughters of two prominent Liggins Institute figures both graduated from the University of Auckland last week.
Eleanor Bloomfield, whose father Frank is the Institute director and a neonatologist at National Women’s Health, graduated with a first class Masters in English. Her thesis was on the medieval mystery plays that were once performed in the streets of York, England – a topic she wryly admits seems obscure in New Zealand.
Jackie Liggins, whose late father Sir Graham (Mont) Liggins was a scientific giant and the Institute’s namesake, graduated with a PhD in Psychiatry wearing the same gown and hood that her father wore back in 1970, when he became the first graduate ever to receive a degree from the University of Auckland’s just-established School of Medicine.
Eleanor, 24, learnt Middle English in order to read the medieval plays, a collection of short linked pageants which together tell the Biblical story of salvation history, from Creation to the Last Judgement. The plays were performed on the streets of York from at least the late 14th century through to the mid-16th, when they were heavily censured under the Reformation and eventually died out.
“I like the rhythm and alliteration of Middle English,” she says. “Once you get the hang of that, it's surprisingly easy to understand.”
Her thesis examined the performance of piety in medieval York, focusing on the relationship between the mystery plays and the Mass, the most important ritual of medieval Catholicism. Her research analysed how different areas of the city - the cathedral, the smaller parish churches, and the city streets - functioned as focal points for the medieval display of devotion.
She visited York for her research, and timed a return trip this year to see one of the semi-regular revivals of the mystery plays. That production staged the plays inside the city's cathedral, York Minster, instead of in the streets.
“It was amazing,” she says. “The scale of the production was huge but at the same time it was very much a local affair.” Of the hundred and forty-five cast members, all except one - the actor playing Christ - were volunteer amateurs from the York community.
Eleanor is the eldest of six. All the children were, or are still being, home-schooled by their mother, Kate, who also has a medical degree. Two of her brothers are also studying at the university – one in history and film, one in sports and exercise science. (Frank: “I was thinking of asking the VC for a discount for the fourth one.”)
