Holding steady in the noise, Bryony James takes the helm

Saturday, 23 May 2026

Victoria University of Wellington’s new vice‑chancellor steps into the role amid major sector upheaval. Amy Ridout speaks with Bryony James about navigating the change.

Bryony James is stepping into one of Aotearoa’s most prominent university roles at a time of enormous change.

On June 15, she’ll walk into The Hunter Building at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington as the university’s first female vice-chancellor.

She will face funding challenges, a student body under pressure from the cost of living, and a polarised world where extreme voices are the loudest, and universities are often under attack.

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“Whichever extreme view you take, somebody will find a reason to attack universities. They'll call us woke or they'll call us something else.”

It takes courage to stand up against those loud voices, but James is ready.

“It worries me but also, it kind of excites me. I think it holds me up to be responsible to do something about it.”

The hipster city

When James moved to the capital almost three years ago as VUW’s provost, she had preconceptions about the city.

“I had that Auckland attitude of ‘oh it's Wellington, they're all wannabe hipsters’. And I realised there's nothing wannabe about it - everybody actually is a hipster.”

Another stereotype held true - that of a compact, walkable city.

“I can walk to work for the first time in my life,” said James, who lives in Thorndon. “I can walk into town. It’s transformational to walk places.”

People tell James the city used to be wonderful, and it was a shame she’d missed its heyday.

“[But] it’s great. I know the public sector's been denuded and everything's a bit depressed, but that'll change.”

A journey that began in McDonald’s

After studying materials engineering at the University of Bath in the early 90s, James, who is from Cornwall, cast her net wide in a bid to continue her studies with a PhD.

“I applied to every single university in the English-speaking world excluding America.”

The letters that came back lauded her grades, but told her study would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Apart from one - a University of Auckland offer that told James they’d “figure something out” to get around the international student fees.

With her Kiwi contact due to travel to London, James arranged to meet him at New Zealand House. “So I jumped on the motorbike and rode up to London in the pouring rain.”

At New Zealand House - “the water was pouring off me” - her contact came out looking grumpy. The office he usually used wasn’t available. They’d have to go to McDonald’s, he told her.

“At McDonald's we sat down and the first thing he said to me is, ‘when can you start?’

“And I thought, why not?”

At Auckland University, James threw herself into her PhD in aluminium smelting ‒ “actually fascinating“ ‒ and embraced the academic world.

Two opportunities came along after she finished up - an offer from the Bell Bay aluminium smelter in Tasmania, and a lectureship at Auckland University.

It was an easy choice but it meant a change. With teaching part of her role, James found herself in front of lecture theatres filled with mostly young men.

“You had to be enough on your game to keep 18-year-old boys awake at 8 o'clock in the morning.”

But a spark ignited, and James quickly fell in love with teaching.

This segued into a desire to create opportunities for others, through leadership, and changing the sector, she said.

“That way it’s a vicarious enjoyment - you get to enjoy [others’] success.”

She became deputy dean of Engineering at Auckland University before making a greater leap to become deputy Vice Chancellor at Waikato University.

Then, VUW beckoned, and James jumped at the chance to take on the provost role.

“I thought, oh, Vic, government's right there, if I want to change the sector this is where I need to be. I just can't imagine being anywhere else, everything's led to this.”

Navigating change

James will face a changing funding environment, the struggle to keep enrolments trending upwards, and a student body hammered by the cost of living, and reeling from the end of the fees free scheme.

And all that, with a backdrop of an increasingly polarised world.

“You've got all these loud, extreme, voices shouting at each other, and the majority in the middle are just going quiet because they don't want to put their head up and be shouted at.

“Would you ever think we would go through something like this?” asked James. “All the rights that people have gained, now the pendulums are crashing back - pushback on a lot of equalities and decencies we’ve gained.

“I did not think I’d be living through a time like this.”

Universities had to hold space for the middle ground, James said.

“Creating an environment where the extreme voices are acknowledged, but you move on and work on coming together on a consensus.”

Changing tech

James recently quizzed some undergraduate students on their use of AI and was surprised by their answers.

Learners were using the technology to cater to their learning styles - turning lecture notes into podcasts, and creating personalised tutors to run flashcards and set exams.

But what was more interesting to James was the way students approached the burgeoning technology.

“A lot of them … said they're really worried about it degrading their own cognitive ability.

“My colleagues who are anxious about [AI] should be reassured that we've got these 18-year-olds having these really considered relationships with AI.”

For students worried about future employment in an AI-dominated world, James said there was no better place than university to help them on their way.

“We are the place that's going to give them the skills they need … and the critical thinking skills to navigate that world.”

More than money, stability is needed

Under former Vice-Chancellor Nic Smith watch, the university arrested a long-term decline in the numbers of domestic students.

Like her predecessor, James will contact high school principals to look at how to keep those numbers trending upwards.

The university is fighting a demographic shift - last year, The Post reported that Wellington City’s school-aged population plummeted by 4130 over a decade. This population will further deplete in the next decade, and the university is braced for that impact.

However, James intends to look at the overall picture - “size, shape and mix”.

That included international students, whose numbers were rebounding, and whose presence, James said, added to the university experience.

“We've got this real technicolour mix thanks to international students: that's a really important part of the lifelong connections that our students make.”

The funding environment was always changing, and challenging, James said. “Yes, we need more money, but actually we also just need stability, so we can just figure out what’s going on.”

Tough times for students

James is aware of the pressures on the student body. Rising costs meant some were using foodbanks, and accessing the university’s hardship fund.

That was partly driven by the lack of student jobs.

“When hospitality suffers, your evening part-time jobs go away,” she said which meant more students were working during the day, which interfered with study.

“When I was an undergraduate, you were a fulltime student with a part-time job. Now, we've got students who are fulltime working and part-time students, but they're still enrolled fulltime.”

It was a huge load to carry, and the university was looking at ways to cater to these students - perhaps with more online learning, she said.

But it was a balance as in-person learning was at the forefront of the university experience, she said.

“I've got no answers at the moment, but it is certainly something that we're committed to getting right.”

What the university could improve, however, was better connections with the city. James intended to continue investing in applied learning, and foster student links with the private and public sector.

As well as giving the student a taste of working life and a boost for their CV, these connections fed into James’ ambition to create a more fluid boundary between the university and the outside world.

At the moment, about a third of school leavers head to university. But James believed the way we access tertiary education is about to change, in part driven by huge shifts such as AI.

“The boundary around the university is going to become far more porous. As students leave, they'll become a part of our community in a way that's far more vibrant and changing than it is at the moment.”

Alumni will become employers, advisers, donors. And they’ll become students again, James predicted.

“As AI changes employment, people are going to be dropping in and out of education in a way we've all aspired to across the sector for a while, but we've not really cracked.”

Dropping in on lectures

With no materials engineering programme at the university, James won’t be teaching, beyond the odd guest lecture.

Instead, she drops in on other lectures, picking a first-year subject ‒ “so I actually stand a chance of following it”.

She’s sat in on space sciences, law, music, and cognitive science classes.

“You just see the different way that your academic staff tackle teaching and there's a tonne of different ways to teach. And you just see the students and how they respond.”

Outside of work James paddles with the university’s dragon boat team - “an absolute hoot” - and is a woodworker, a hobby that began during the pandemic lockdowns.

“Everyone started doing sourdough, but I started doing woodworking.”

A bunch of YouTube videos later, and James is knocking up furniture. Recent projects include a coffee table for a colleague’s office, and a chest of drawers.

James pulled up a photo to show the macrocarpa drawers, decorated with carved hares, a neat-looking piece of furniture that took her “weeks and weeks and weeks”.

University ‘part of the puzzle’

With the end of the fees free scheme, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon indicated that the $350 million annual savings could be channelled into trades.

James is “perfectly okay” with the Government wanting to invest public money responsibly.

“But the suddenness of it has created a problem for some of our students for sure, and I hope whatever they do with that money, it goes into tertiary in some way, and student access.”

University wasn’t for everyone, James said.

“But I think university education is part of the education and training puzzle that a country needs. You come to university for the disciplinary learning which is at a depth and at the cutting edge of knowledge you don't get anywhere else because that's kind of our mission.”

“It's not for everybody, but it is for an awful lot of people.”