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Success for NZ-based anthropologists in the 2016 Marsden Fund

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Four New Zealand-based anthropologists have had success in the 2016 Marsden Fund awards. Our congratulations go to:

Professor Thegn Ladefoged from Anthropology at the University of Auckland, who received a Marsden grant of $705,000 for his project The making of Māori society: An archaeological analysis of social networks and geo-political interaction.

Associate Professor Jeff Sissons from Cultural Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington, who received a Marsden grant of $390,000 for his project The mysterious disappearance of tūāhu.

Dr Phyllis Herda from Anthropology at the University of Auckland, who received a Marsden grant of $530,000 for the project Ancient Futures: Late 18th and early 19th century Tongan arts and their legacies.

Dr Lorena Gibson from Cultural Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington, who received a Marsden Fast Start grant of $300,000 for her project East Side Orchestras: Music, poverty, and social change.

The Marsden Fund was established by the government in 1994 to fund excellent fundamental research. It is a contestable fund administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the Marsden Fund Council.

Marsden Fund research benefits society as a whole by contributing to the development of researchers with knowledge, skills and ideas. The Fund supports research excellence in science, engineering and maths, social sciences and the humanities. Competition for grants is intense. Marsden is regarded as the hallmark of excellence for research in New Zealand.

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CFP: Medical Anthropology in Aotearoa Annual Symposium

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Formed in 2016, the Society of Medical Anthropology in Aotearoa (SOMAA) is a national collective for medical anthropologists working in or on Aotearoa (or interested in research/issues here). SOMAA will be launched at a one day symposium in Wellington on 15 February 2017, with Professor Marcia Inhorn from Yale as keynote. The call for papers is now open.

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10 questions with ... Marama Muru-Lanning

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Welcome to our new blog series, '10 questions with ...' which features short interviews with anthropologists currently working in or on Aotearoa/New Zealand. We are pleased to welcome Dr Marama Muru-Lanning as our first guest.

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The Kākano Fund: Reporting back to Bel communities, Madang, Papua New Guinea

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Dylan Gaffney, from the University of Otago's Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, received a Kākano Fund Award earlier this year. In this post he reflects on how this award enabled him to share his findings with his research participants in Papua New Guinea.

Fostering anthropological thought through Facebook

Recently on a rainy Wellington morning I sat down with Lorena Gibson and Catherine Trundle to discuss the Cultural Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington Facebook page they run. Below I share a slightly edited transcript of our interview.

What’s Up in the World? - Weekly Digest 15/07/2016 Written by Harriet Lane-Tobin

For this week's digest I am addressing space, spatial relations and the new craze of Pokemon GO. The power of the video games both to pop culture and to urban culture. How it becomes a potent force in altering their mutual understandings. Also giving a nod to the US military and the importance of the silence in enacting social change.

 

What’s Up in the World? - Weekly Digest 08/07/2016 Written by Harriet Lane-Tobin

In light of mine and the social media worlds' overwhelming responses to Jesse William’s speech at the BET awards I am grounding this weeks digest in the opposite response. The issues of inward and outward stigma and discrimination. However can the world be completely brained when ‘we’ are often geared toward ignorance and misguided efforts.