Associate Professor Robin Quigg, left, Distinguished Professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett, centre, and Daizy Thompson-Fawcett are part of the team on the research programme Toitū he Kāinga: Healthy Environmental Relationships in Urban Settings. Photo: Graham Warman
Te Iho Whenua - School of Geography Distinguished Professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett has received the prestigious Australasian Cities Research Network (ACRN) Medal.
Michelle (Ngāti Whātua) has focused her career on extending the decolonisation conversation into the processes of urban planning. She has made significant contributions to Indigenous-led urban planning and decolonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand.
In its citation, the ACRN says it is an honour to award Michelle as “a leading figure in Indigenous planning and urban research whose work has profoundly shaped scholarship and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally.”
Distinguished Professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett has been awarded the Australasian Cities Research Network Medal. Michelle has focused her career on extending the decolonisation conversation into the processes of urban planning.
The citation says her research has reoriented planning discourse toward partnership, relational ethics and the integration of mātauranga Māori into how cities are imagined and made.
“Instead of requiring Indigenous peoples to conform to Western urban planning processes and practices, diverse approaches rooted in varying worldviews should be embraced. Indigenous groups should be afforded agency, in keeping with their own practices, as self-determining partners within more generous urban planning processes,” Michelle says.
Michelle’s commitment to incorporating Indigenous values in urban planning includes passing it on to those entering the field.
“The opportunity to teach a decolonising and indigenising ethic to our future city builders is what placed me in the University,” she says.
“It’s really important that people designing our spaces understand the context of Aotearoa, the histories of colonisation, and the importance of working in partnership with Māori and having a really strong, committed and ethical practice around that.”
Over the last five years, Michelle has been leading a research programme funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga called Toitū he Kāinga: Healthy Environmental Relationships in Urban Settings.
The Principal Investigators on Toitū he Kāinga alongside Michelle are Associate Professor Robin Quigg with the Department of Public Health at Otago, Dr James Berghan from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and Dr Crystal Olin, Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, along with a team of research assistants and postgraduate students.
The research aims to understand how Māori identity, mahi toitū and rangatiratanga contribute to flourishing lives that can deeply shape urban spaces into sustainable kāinga of the future.
The medal was awarded at the State of Australasian Cities Conference in Brisbane in December. Crystal accepted the medal on Michelle’s behalf as Michelle was celebrating her son’s Honours graduation from Otago.
-Nā Antonia Wallace, Kaiarataki Pārokoroko – Communications Adviser Humanities
School of Geography
Nau mai, haere mai ki Te Ihowhenua. Geography is an environmental science concerned with the causes and organisation of natural and human phenomena across the globe.
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