Faculty of Arts awarded $2.7 million in latest Marsden Fund round

04 November 2014

Researchers and research groups from the Faculty of Arts have been awarded $2.7 million in the prestigious Marsden Fund round this year. The University research supported by the fund will address a wide range of topics, from getting inside the earthquake machine, to 8000 years of hunter-gatherer adaptation, and axioms and algorithms for multi-winner elections.

The research from the Faculty of Arts looks at Māori experiences of treaty settlements, Samoan leadership in an international world, hunter-gatherer adaptation in Australia over the Holocene, and government-funded support for business in New Zealand.

“The Marsden Fund supports leading-edge research and these awards reflect the breadth and depth of research at the University of Auckland”, says Distinguished Professor Jane Harding, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research).

“The University prides itself on the excellence of its research and we congratulate all our researchers on the calibre of their work.”

Professor Margaret Mutu of Te Wānanga o Waipapa received $710,000 to research Māori views of the treaty settlements process and outcomes. A large number of claimants throughout the country have agreed to share their stories with Professor Mutu. By examining these previously undocumented perspectives Professor Mutu aims to provide important information for those still to settle.

A grant of $705,000 was awarded to Dr Melani Anae of the Centre for Pacific Studies to investigate how transnational matai (chiefs born outside of Samoa) maintain meaningful and sustainable ties to those back home. Dr Anae’s research will be conducted in Australia, Hawai’i, and Utah and will culminate in a visit to six home villages in Samoa to discuss the findings.

Associate Professor Judith Littleton of Anthropology received $675,000 to study over 216 burials in Roonka, Australia, dating to the last 8,000 years. Professor Littleton will study these burials as individual events to reconstruct a picture of historical change in human health and behaviour over the Holocene.

Dr Gerard Cotterell of the Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences received $300,000. Dr Cotterell’s work will measure the size and trends of spending on government support to private business in New Zealand and examine the rationales that politicians use to justify this spending and how business leaders rationalise their willingness to accept it.

Applications to the Marsden Fund are highly competitive. This year the fund distributed $53 million to 96 research teams around the country.

Read more about the Marsden Fund.