Aroha: The couple brought together through academia

Saturday, 13 June 2026

It might have been fate that brought Drs Grace Moore and Tom McLean together at a conference in Melbourne in 2015. Grace wasn’t planning to attend and filled in for a colleague at the last minute.

Dr Grace Moore is an associate professor in English literature at University of Otago and lives in Dunedin with Dr Tom McLean, 60, a professor of English literature also at Otago, her son Felix, 19, a student, and Maggie the huntaway dog.

Grace: I’m originally from Dorset, England and did my PhD at University of Bristol.

I married Felix’s father, who’s Australian but was teaching in Idaho, so we lived in the US for two years and then I got a job in Melbourne.

When Felix was five the marriage ended and I solo parented him until he was 11.

Tom has been a positive influence on Felix’s life and takes his stepfather responsibilities seriously, says Grace.

I met Tom at a conference in Melbourne in 2015 which I shouldn’t have been at. But a colleague wasn’t well so they asked me to step in.

Tom is clever and sensitive and has a great sense of the absurd, says Grace.

Tom was a speaker and that night at dinner we started chatting. There was a delegate from China and one from Korea and they weren’t really keeping up with the fast-moving conversation, so Tom turned to me and said, ‘I’ll come back to you, but I want to be a good neighbour and make these international delegates feel part of the conversation’.

I was really impressed with his thoughtfulness. He later told me he’d lived in China for three years and knew what it felt like to be a second-language speaker so he bent over backwards to include them.

Tom asked me out for dinner the next night, but I had to relieve my babysitter. When I got home she said, ‘do you want to die alone?’

We kept in touch and Tom came to Melbourne to see an exhibition and that Christmas Felix was with his Australian family so Tom and I spent three weeks in Tasmania.

Children weren’t really part of Tom’s plan and he didn’t meet Felix for a year until I was sure about our relationship.

I was so impressed with Tom’s willingness to take Felix on because it takes a really exceptional person to do that, particularly at age 50. Tom has been a positive influence on Felix’s life and he takes his stepfather responsibilities seriously.

Tom is clever and sensitive and has a great sense of the absurd. We job share and sometimes he can look at me when something is happening in a meeting and we’ll both collapse into giggles. Laughter diffuses everything.

Tom was at the point in life where he had accepted he was going to be single. Then he met Grace and all that changed.

We’re not professionally competitive because we’re at different stages of our careers – I’m an associate professor while Tom is a full professor. We bring different strengths to our work.

As the middle child, Tom is conflict-adverse, which is different to me who explodes, clears the air and everything is fine which Tom can find confronting. He will try to smooth things over when what we really need to do is nut things out.

I’m also quick to make decisions while Tom is slow and thoughtful. But it’s something we’ve come to accept and understand there’s a place for both kinds of decision making.

Tom: I was born just outside Chicago but we moved around a lot with my engineer father’s job.

I became a primary school teacher and taught English in China for three years.

I always thought I’d be better with older students and after my PhD a job came up at University of Otago. I’d never been to this part of the world but George W. Bush had just been elected and I thought, now seems like a good time to go. I fell in love with Dunedin and have been here since 2004.

I moved here with my previous partner, but after five years it ended. When I met Grace I’d had a few other relationships but none lasted and I was at the point where I accepted I was going to be single. But when your business is reading books, you enjoy a certain amount of solitude so I was OK with that.

I met Grace the day I turned 50 at an academic conference in Melbourne. I knew of her, as she’s a big deal in our field as a scholar of Charles Dickens, among other things.

We both looked familiar to the other and figured we must have met at a previous conference, but can’t remember which one. I asked her out for dinner but she had to get home to her son.

I’ve always been attracted to intelligence and Grace is very intelligent. I’m also a big art guy and Grace loves art so we bonded over our love of galleries, museums and good food.

I like kids but also liked a certain amount of freedom and kids hadn’t been a priority for me. We decided I wouldn’t meet Felix until we were sure our relationship was serious.

A year later I met him in Melbourne. My family background is Polish so as a surprise Felix made me a Polish cake. I thought, ‘he knows the way to my heart’. It’s been rewarding being part of Felix’s life.

Grace knows how to make a decision while I’m the kind of person where if you give me two or three options, I’ll turn them into 10.

I’m also impressed with how Grace can take charge of a situation. But although she’s lived outside Britain for so long, she’s still English and can be a bit more restrained while I’m American so am more willing to speak my mind.

We have great conversations and Grace laughs at my stupid dad jokes.

There’s a Bonnie Raitt song, Nick of Time, which is how I feel about this relationship. It’s not that I was unhappy before, but I do feel really lucky that in my 50s all these wonderful things happened to me.