Dr Christiane Leurquin

Contact

Room 5C18
Tel +64 3 479 5413
Email christiane.leurquin@otago.ac.nz

Research interests

• Discourses, practices and theories of anthropology in the Pacific
• Pacific perspectives on wellbeing and health
• Negotiating identity in post-colonial world
• Orality and cultural studies in Oceania
• Women perspectives on tradition and education in Kanaky/New Caledonia

Courses

• ANTH 205 Anthropology and the Contemporary Pacific
• POPH 192 Population Health

Background

I studied History at the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris and completed a Doctorate on the History of the Kanak population. I was first employed as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Otago in 2008, and I have focused my research on the literature of the French speaking Pacific islands, with a particular interest in the literature of New Caledonia. I was interested in studying the emergent indigenous literature of this region through the prism of History.

The colonisation of the Pacific islands by the French left a mark on the culture and influenced the style of writing as well as the topics. I was looking at the portrait of the Kanaks by the French, as well as the testimony by the Kanaks of their own history and situation.

I also researched childhood and identity, analysing the ties between tradition and social break up, introspection and search for identity in the spatiotemporal location of childhood.

Roles

• French Honorary Consul for Otago and Southland
• Pacific Support Officer for the Social Anthropology Programme

Current projects

• Research on Maurice Leenhardt's Kanak tales, collected in New Caledonia at the beginning of the 20th Century, with a particular focus on the representation of Kanak women, and analysing them considering oral tradition and oral history.
• Thanks to the Pacific Funds, I am looking at intangible cultural heritage, and specifically traditions passed on from mothers to daughters in New Caledonia, through a series of interviews.