title: Helen Simpson (lecturer)
text: # Helen Simpson (lecturer)
  
  Helen Macdonald Simpson (21 November 1890 – 6 November 1960) was a notable New Zealand teacher, university lecturer and writer. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1890. Norman Richmond was her younger brother.
  
  ## Life
  
  She graduated from Canterbury College, and from the University of London with a PhD. She taught at Christchurch Training College. She was the first New Zealand woman to be awarded a doctorate, and also the first New Zealand woman to teach at a New Zealand university.
  
  On 29 January 1927, she married Arthur Barrows Simpson. She wrote The women of New Zealand, a social history survey, which was published in 1940 as part of a government programme to mark 100 years of colonisation of New Zealand.
  
  