Postgraduate Students

Harpreet Singh, PhD Candidate, BET (Manukau), MA (UC Santa Barbara)

Harpreet is undertaking research on early Sikh history in New Zealand by focusing on the arrival, development and expansion of the community and the ways in which religious understandings, practices and institutions were transplanted in a new cultural landscape that was vastly different from their original homeland of Punjab. The research will tap into previously neglected sources and will re-examine oral histories in order to bring forth new evidence to reconstruct the Sikh history in New Zealand between 1880 and 1950. In turn, Harpreet looks to challenge aspects of the currently accepted history of this community, at the same time bringing forth greater detail and evidence on it.

Harpreet has published a paper called "Reassessing the Early History of the New Zealand Sikh Community 1881-1914" which briefly looks into the earliest history of this community. The article is published in the New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, December 2010, Issue 2.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Tony Ballantyne

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