Department of Anthropology & Archaeolgy
An interdisciplinary Social Science department in the Division of Humanities, we study human society from prehistory to the present.
Seminars are usually held during semester time on Fridays at 3:00pm. The venue is Richardson 10C15 (the Moot Court).
How do postgraduate students experience writing ethics applications? Must they always reinvent the wheel as they blindly stumble through their first ethics application overwhelmed by blending theoretical models, innovative methodologies into ethical principles? 'Getting through ethics' is a daunting task. They rarely gain approval upon submission, unnecessarily stalling their education and socializing cynicism toward IRBs. Is there an alternative? Can the establishment of an online, interoperable open access repository of exemplary ethics applications voluntarily donated by international scholars, de-stress distressing circumstances? Does The Ethics Application Repository (TEAR) enhance a commitment to ethical principles rather than compliance to them? This is one of four projects central to a Marsden funded research programme focusing on tensions with ethics review.
In research on North Vanuatu I have focused on human-environmental relations, with specific attention to the interleaving of indigenous knowledge, seasonal production systems and ritual practices (hence not political ecology per se). However, I recently witnessed two processes - one natural, one man-made - which speak to the way in which the climate change debate, and associated policies, are unfolding across the Pacific Islands.
Between 1997 and 2008 the Torres Islands experienced two severe earthquakes (7.5+ Richter) which visibly altered parts of the local shoreline. During those years the islanders were confronted, for the first time, with narratives of climate change and catastrophist ideas about sea level rise. In 2003 a visiting team from the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) decided that changes to the local shoreline were indeed due to sea level rise and labelled a local community the ‘first global warming refugees’ in the Pacific. This characterization was widely disseminated to the international media, becoming a sensationalistic story surrounding the deliberations of the 2004 climate summit in Montreal, and prompting a gigantic 'emergency' donation by the Canadian government. In contrast, I have recently argued that Melanesian communities are actually well suited to cope with sea level rise and other extreme weather fluctuations. In this seminar I want to describe how the Vanuatu government, and local communities, variously interpret external perspectives regarding their purported fragility, and weave them into emerging perceptions and policies regarding their island homes.
The advocacy literature focuses on parent-professional partnerships and the self-advocacy literature traces 'people first' responses to deinstitutionalisation by people with intellectual disabilities. Parent support organizations represent a different type of advocacy that shares the experiential expertise gained from raising a child with a disability, chronic health condition or special needs, but draws on both the partnership and participation models of support. Fitting the family in to advocacy practices keeps one such non-governmental organisation, Parent to Parent New Zealand, working between individuals with genetic difference and the discourses circulating in public debates about disability.
Second Floor, Richardson Building