The Dr Cyril Timo Schäfer Memorial Graduate Student Conference Presentation Awards take place at the Association's annual conference. These awards are given in honour of the memory of our late colleague from Otago University for excellence in graduate presentations by Association student members at the ASAANZ Annual Conference.
The 2025 ASAA/NZ conference “Edges, Borders, Margins, and Peripheries” was held in Whāingaroa (Raglan) on 9-12 December. All the graduate students who presented were commended. We academics making the selections found it a difficult task given the high quality demonstrated by so many students. Nonetheless, our decisions were unanimous. Congratulations to these student awardees!
Shalvi, a PhD student of Panjab University, India, was awarded first place for Water at the Margins of the Margins: Ecology and Peripherality in Spiti Valley.
Second-place-equal awards were given to Will Stringer and Kēhaunani Springer, both PhD students. Will, of Maynooth University, Ireland, presented on Anticipating Collapse: Theorising with Activists on the Future; Kēhaunani of the University of Waikato, Aotearoa, presented on Ornamental Sustainability: Extractive Economies of Hawai‘i’s Aquarium Trade.
Clare Collins, a Masters student at Massey University, Aotearoa, was awarded third place for her presentation, On the Edges of Food Charity: Volunteering as an Act of Concealed Kindness.
Two special commendations were given to virtual presentations: These went to Fine Brendtner of Aarhus University, Denmark, for her Shell and Gradient piece in the plenary: “The Shape of Things to Come” and to Angela Wong of the University of Sydney, Australia, for Flagging the Edges of Diaspora: Symbolic Use of the Republic of Vietnam Flag in the Reconfiguration of the Peripheries of/in Diaspora.
We academics making these assessments suggested that our Association might consider a separate award in future for on-line presentations.
