Isichei was born Elizabeth Mary Allo inTauranga, New Zealand, on 22 March 1939, the daughter of Albert (an agricultural scientist) and Lorna Allo.[2][3] She was educated atTauranga College, and attained the highest marks in New Zealand in the 1955 university entrance scholarship examinations.[4] She went on to study at theUniversity of Canterbury, from where she graduated with aBachelor of Arts degree in 1960 and won a senior university scholarship.[5][6] She then completed aMaster of Arts with first-class honours in history atVictoria University of Wellington in 1961.[2] Her honours thesis formed the basis of her book,Political Thinking and Social Experience, published in 1964.[7] She won aCommonwealth Scholarship and, after a brief period as a temporary assistant lecturer in history at the University of Canterbury, undertook doctoral studies atNuffield College, Oxford.[8][9] HerDPhil thesis, completed in 1967, was titledQuakers and society in Victorian England.[10]
At Oxford, Allo met Peter Isichei, a chemical pathologist. The couple became engaged in 1963,[11] and married on 23 July 1964, going on to have five children.[2][9]
Elizabeth Isichei was a professor in the Department of History at theUniversity of Jos in Nigeria from 1976, and was general editor forJos Oral History and Literature Texts.[2] She has said that having both a family and career "would not have been possible if my husband had not gone to any lengths to help and encourage me".[9] She was a visiting fellow at the University of Canterbury in 1984,[9] and in 1992 was appointed a professor ofreligious studies at theUniversity of Otago.[12][13] On her retirement from Otago in 2006, she was accorded the title ofprofessor emeritus.[13]
Before going to Oxford in 1962, Allo established a reputation as a poet, with her work appearing in publications including theListener,Landfall,Comment and thePoetry Yearbook.[18] She returned to poetry in the 1990s, and her poems were published in theListener,Winterspin, and various anthologies,[18] as well as her own published collections.[19]
