Va'aomanū Pasifika

Research

Va'aomanū Pasifika fosters inquiry, innovation in research and interdisciplinary collaboration. Staff research interests include:

  • Gender and militarisation (Marsden Grant)
  • Processes of globalisation in the Pacific, migration and cultural change, popular music and dance
  • Youth Voice: Youth Connectedness (FRST)
  • Language, corpus studies and research, preservation and maintenance of  language, social and cultural implications of language loss in the diaspora
  • Reconstruction of traditional cultural concepts and mythological narratives in a more 'modern' Samoan epistemological framework.

For further information about staff research interests, please see the staff profiles.

As part of our commitment to research, we welcome postgraduate students who want to study towards a BA(Hons), Master's or PhD degree.

Recent postgraduate students have attended and presented at national and international conferences such as:

  • Mixed Qualitative Methods, National Workshop (2009)
  • Critiquing Education Conference 2, held at AUT, Auckland (July 2009)
  • Growing Pacific Researchers Fono (BRCSS), held at the University of Auckland (April 2008)
  • Measina Conference, held in Apia, (Dec 2008)
  • Teaching Ethics, International Conference, held in Auckland (December 2008)
  • Critiquing Pacific Education Conference, held at AUT, Auckland (2007)
  • Ethics of Knowledge Production, Pacific Regional Conference, held in Apia (December 2007).

Recent and current student research includes:

  • Samoan language in New Zealand society
  • Tokelauan youth connectedness
  • The judicial decolonisation of Rapanui
  • Walter Edward Gudgeon in the Cook Islands 1898 to 1909

For further information, please see the Student Profiles page.