Helen Farley’s passing caught many of us off guard. She approached her journey through cancer with hope and positivity, always dealing with “what is” rather than “what if”. She thankfully remained incredibly well throughout most of that journey, and we were working with Helen on many inspiring projects. Those involved benefited from her seemingly boundless energy to positively impact students, and indeed everyone, she came into contact with.
Helen was an inspiration in many ways, but one of these was her firm belief that you should follow your interests and passions, work hard, and let the rest take care of itself. This is not necessarily an unusual view, but few have a CV and body of research that demonstrates a commitment to this principle quite like Helen’s. Although she was a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Canterbury (UC) at the time of her passing, her undergraduate studies qualified her as a veterinarian. The transition from veterinary science to criminal justice is unusual enough, but few would make such a journey via successful careers in music journalism, and academic research and teaching in religious studies and esotericism.
One wagers that not many of Helen’s classmates at vet school—nor the attendees of the hugely successful ANZSOC conference she organised in Ōtautahi Christchurch in 2024—have ever been harassed by the Falun Gong for their fearless research into certain practices of that organisation. Helen once mentioned, with amusement, that one of her most cited research works was a chapter she wrote for a book titled Heavy Metal Music in Britain, called Demons, Devils and Witches: The Occult in Heavy Metal Music. Helen was always willing to ask the difficult questions and follow them wherever they needed to go. Both her career and her life are clear demonstrations of this.
For those of us who met her more recently, it is her passionate work on higher education in prisons for which we will remember her best. It is hard to overstate Helen Farley’s contribution to prison education. She was extraordinarily effective in achieving meaningful, lasting change in this field, and her track record is remarkable. For example, at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ), she pitched and won an Australian Federal Government research grant of approximately AUD 6 million to develop and implement technology and systems to deliver higher education into correctional facilities. The technologies delivered through this project enabled people in prisons across Australia to commence preparatory and undergraduate study while incarcerated.
The project was hugely successful and continues today as part of UniSQ’s core business. The opportunity to study was embraced by incarcerated people and prison staff alike. Where so many efforts to effect change struggle to become sustainable, Helen’s work in Australia has endured.
In 2025, one participant in the programme personally reached out to Helen by email with the following words:
Back in 2014, while I was in prison, I began my higher education journey through UniSQ’s program at the AMC. Because of your work and your commitment to education in prisons, I was able to study engineering and begin to change my life. I know I’m not alone in this—many others have walked a similar path because of the opportunities you created, in a place where the only thing we could control was our future.
Helen and her partner James had long been keen to move to New Zealand and did so in 2018, when Helen was offered a role with Ara Poutama Aotearoa, the New Zealand Department of Corrections, as a specialist advisor on education programmes delivered into prisons. While Helen believed higher education offered unique benefits for people in prison, she also believed deeply in the potentially life-changing impact of education more broadly. She worked tirelessly to advance this, both from within government and later from outside it, after returning to academia in 2022.
Helen became President of the Australasian Correctional Education Association (ACEA) and served as Co-editor of the Journal of Prison Education Research. In 2023, she was awarded the ANZSOC Award for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching.
Helen was unwavering in her drive to ensure that all her students experienced enriching and inspiring learning. In her role as Director of the Criminal Justice programme at UC, she told students they were to become her “Secret Agents”, who would graduate and go forth into criminal justice agencies to do good work. She was only half-joking. Helen genuinely cared for her students, and that care was reciprocated, as evidenced by the outpouring of student tributes following her passing.
While at UC, Helen’s experience in teaching innovation shone through. She consistently challenged colleagues to improve the university experience for all. Drawing on her background in mobile learning research, Helen seized the opportunity to work closely with UC Online to make Criminal Justice programme offerings fully available online, providing greater flexibility for students. This work aligned strongly with the university’s strategic direction at the time, and she received a Teaching Transformation Award in 2024.
Helen’s contribution to our field was immense, and she will be deeply missed by innumerable people. Many of us are continuing projects we began with Helen, only to realise just how central her energy was to their success—and how profound her loss is for us all. Helen, we miss you.
