KEY POINTS:
It's been five years since Dame Anne Salmond last took a course at the University of Auckland and her enthusiasm to get back into the lecture theatre is obvious.
The historian and author of the Montana award-winning The Trial of the Cannibal Dog has been on a year-long sabbatical researching and writing her next book.
Before that, she was involved in the management of the university and, while those nine years were "fascinating and quite a privilege", returning to teaching next semester was not a step down. Instead, she said, it was a chance to get back to doing what she loved.
"I wanted to do things that I came into academia to do, which is to explore knowledge and do that with other people," said Dame Anne, who will teach a first-year paper, Introduction to Maori Society, from July.
Dame Anne said the course would be a "journey", starting with one of her passions, navigation techniques. It would move on to differences in Maori settlement of the country.
Family and friends are also important to Dame Anne, who has spent weeks readying her home for the visit of her first grandchild, three-month-old Tom, who lives with her daughter, Amiria, in the United Kingdom.
The NZ Historic Places Trust chairwoman grew up in Gisborne and often travels there with architect husband Jeremy in their silver "pop-up toaster" of a caravan.
On education, Dame Anne speaks with an almost infectious enthusiasm about the need for equal access.
"I don't think it should be something you can buy. With user pays, it does get really hard for kids from poor families and I don't agree with that."
Dame Anne believes New Zealand is a wonderful place and considers people oblivious to its heritage as "impoverished".
She was captivated when expanding her understanding of Maoridom beyond "action songs and stick games" as a 17-year-old university student.
"It was almost like falling in love ... It was like 'Wow, I didn't know all this existed'," she said.
"When I first started to meet some of the old people and went up the coast and stayed on marae I was just gobsmacked.
"I thought, 'This is fantastic, all this, it's all there and I didn't know it existed'."
The "highly politicised" 1970s and early 1980s were challenging for Dame Anne, who does not have Maori blood.
"There were Maori who felt Pakeha should not get involved in Maori knowledge," Dame Anne said.
"I had already established a lot of close relationships by then. If that hadn't been the case, it would have been difficult to survive that period."
Dame Anne admitted the respect given to elders in Maori society was increasingly becoming "nice", rather than the feeling of "getting a bit irrelevant" that could come with age.
With her return to the classroom, she's set to continue being relevant to the next generation of leaders.
