About Diana Unwin

The Diana Unwin Chair provides academic and professional leadership for restorative justice research and practice at Te Ngāpara.

Diana Unwin is one of New Zealand’s least known philanthropists. An intensely private person, Diana died on 4 July 2014. In 1992 Diana established the Grace Memorial Trust, named after her mother.

Over her adult life Diana had been involved in CORSO, UNICEF, Save the Children, the United Nations Association, CND, WILPF and the international peace movement. This international involvement combined with her extensive local participation in restorative justice, homelessness and poverty, women’s refuge, refugee and migrant services meant that Diana was not short of ideas as to where her trust’s funds could be directed.

Peace, dispute resolution, prison reform and restorative justice have been a major focus of trust funding, culminating in 2013 with the support of the inaugural Chair in Restorative Justice at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Appropriately the Chair will be named after Diana.

—Jenny Gill, Trustee, Grace Memorial Trust, 2022