Penelope Ann Boumelha FAHA is an English literature academic, and emeritus professor at Victoria University of Wellington.
Her thesis was titled Female sexuality, marriage and divorce in the fiction of Thomas Hardy, with special reference to the period 1887–1896, and was supervised by Mary Jacobus.
[2] She was promoted to Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, before deciding to return to academic study as Jury Professor in 2005.
[4] Boumelha left Adelaide in 2009 to take the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University of Wellington, where she remained until 2014.
[7] Boumelha's research focuses on feminist criticism, gender and class in British and Irish fiction.