Eugénie Henderson

Henderson was born on 2 October 1914 at Rose Villa, Archbold Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, England.[1] She was the daughter of William Alexander Cruickshank Henderson, a civil engineer, and his wife Pansy Viola (née Schürer).[1][2] She was educated in London.[1] She studied English at University College, London, graduating with first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.[1][2] Daniel Jones, one of her lecturers, "encouraged her to study the phonetics of south-east Asian languages".[1]

In 1936, Henderson became an adviser on the pronunciation of names in foreign languages at the BBC.[3] In 1937, she was appointed a lecturer in the Department of Phonetics of University College, London.[2] With the outbreak of the Second World War, she joined the civil service: she worked in the Ministry of Economic Warfare as a temporary assistant principal between 1939 and 1941.[2] When Japan entered the war in late 1941, the British government realised that there was an urgent need for language training.[1] She therefore returned to academia and was appointed a lecturer in phonetics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1942.[2][4] The Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, to which she was assigned, spent the rest of the war teaching Japanese and other Far Eastern languages to military personnel.[1][4]

In 1946, the Department of South-East Asia and the Islands was re-established and expanded.[4] Lecturers appointed to this department were also members of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics where they were supervised by Henderson.[4][5] She was promoted to senior lecturer in Phonetics in 1946.[2] She was appointed Reader in Phonetics in 1953.[2][1] In 1954, she was a visiting professor at Rangoon University, and undertook fieldwork in the Bwe Karen and Chin languages.[2][4] From 1960 to 1966, she was the acting head of the Department of South-East Asia and the Islands.[4] She was made Professor of Phonetics in 1964; this was made into an established chair two years later.[2][5] She was head of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics between 1966 and 1970.[4] She retired in 1982 and was appointed Emeritus Professor by the University of London.[2][5]

Outside of her university positions, Henderson held a number of positions. She was treasurer of the Philological Society from 1965 or 1966 to 1974.[1][4] She later served as its president, heading the organisation between 1984 and 1988.[2] She also served as Chair of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1977 to 1980.[1]

On 8 January 1941, Henderson married George Meier; she continued to use her maiden name professionally.[1] Together they had five children: one daughter and four sons.[2]

On 27 July 1989, Henderson died at her home in Camden, London and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.[1]

Grave of Eugenie Henderson in Highgate Cemetery

Henderson was made an honorary fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1985.[2] In 1986, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[1]

In 1989, a Festschrift was published in her honour. It was tiled South-East Asian Linguistics: Essays in Honour of Eugenie J.A. Henderson and was edited by Jeremy H. C. S. Davidson.[6]

• Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (1949). Prosodies in Siamese: A Study in Synthesis. Oxford: Taylor.
• Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (1965). Tiddim Chin: a descriptive analysis of two texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (1965). The domain of phonetics: an inaugural lecture delivered on 5 May 1965. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ISBN 9780901877451.
• Henderson, Eugénie J. A., ed. (1971). The indispensable foundation: a selection from the writings of Henry Sweet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0194370394.
• The papers and correspondence of Eugenie Henderson are held by SOAS Archives. Digitised materials from the collection can be viewed online here.