Rachel works part-time as a tutor on the Master of Professional Practice programme at WelTec/Whitireia. She has a masters and doctorate in development studies and her interest areas keep changing every five years or so, but she is currently researching around issues of sovereignty, citizenship, religion and education.

Current Research Project

Religion and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Research with religious leaders

The COVID-19 pandemic affected various sectors and communities of Aotearoa New Zealand in different ways. The Royal Commission is part way through canvassing the effects of the pandemic, so that we can learn from the past. Religious communities were also affected - ideas about body autonomy, the ethics of vaccination, sovereignty, forced adaptation of rituals, rules regarding meeting together and even theological issues are all present. Together with Geoff Troughton and Phil Fountain, I put forward a research proposal which gained ethics approval in May this year (#30869).  Our qualitative study is exploring how religious leaders navigated the restrictions and other aspects of the pandemic. We have just completed our data collection of 26 interviews and are in the analysis stage. It is exciting to be working on a project that adds the voice of the religious sector to the considerations of how we fared during the pandemic.