Ursula Hope McConnel (1888–1957) was a Queensland anthropologist and ethnographer best remembered for her work with, and the records she made of, the Wik Mungkan people of Cape York Peninsula.
First trained at University College London, then supervised by Professor Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, McConnel was one of the first women to be trained in anthropology and then go out to observe Aboriginal Australians in remote areas, systematically documenting, recording, and describing their culture, mythology, beliefs, and way of life.
Contents
Early life
Born on a grazing property called "Cressbrook" (near Toogoolawah, Queensland), Ursula McConnel was the eighth child (fifth daughter) of grazier James Henry McConnel and his wife, Mary Elizabeth McConnel (née Kent).
Raised on the Cressbrook property in what has been described as an "austere" and "repressed" family environment, she was:
"Striking in looks, brilliant in intellectual gifts, she passed through Brisbane High School for Girls and New England Girls' School at Armidale, garlanded with prizes, before taking first-class honours in philosophy at the University of Queensland
Ursula McConnell has been described as a brave, free-thinking, open questing woman with sometimes strong emotions, growing up at a time when the first wave of feminism n Australia was coming of age: " .. a perfect test case for the various ideas of self-creation .." who also, during troubled times studying, came under the shaping influence of her brother-in-law and psychologist Elton Mayo, husband of her sister Dorothea McConnel: