Kāi Tahu
Lecturer
Contact details
Room 6C25, Richardson Building
Tel +64 3 479 7666
Email simon.barber@otago.ac.nz
Research interests
Simon is a scholar of Indigenous thought and politics, Marxist and critical theory, black studies, communism, and conjunctions thereof. He completed his Masters at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London and his doctorate in the Centre for Research Architecture, also at Goldsmiths. As part of his doctoral research he undertook a postgraduate diploma in Ahunga Tikanga (Māori Laws and Philosophy) at Te Wānanga o Raukawa in Ōtaki. His thesis, developing a conceptual orientation that combined his learning from the university and the wānanga, traced the clash and entanglement of Māori and Pākehā worlds in Te Waipounamu through ongoing processes of colonisation. Before joining the University of Otago he was Te Tomokanga Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the University of Auckland where he taught an undergraduate course on colonisation and social justice and coordinated the Critical Theory Network.
Simon recently co-edited a book with Miri Davidson (Through That Which Separates Us, 2021) centred around themes of deportation, incarceration, and colonialism. Currently, with Sereana Naepi, he is co-editing a Special Issue of New Zealand Sociology that poses the question of how Māori and Pacific scholars might – and already do – transform the social sciences so that they become a more adequate expression of this place (Aotearoa and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa) and its people. He continues to think through and describe the lineaments of an Indigenous historical materialism in a series of academic articles. Simon is a researcher for Economic and Social Research Aotearoa and sits on the executive committee of the Māori Association of Social Sciences.
Teaching
I co-ordinate and teach:
SOCI 208: Environmental Sociology
SOCI 302: Theories of Social Power
Postgraduate Research Supervision
Indigenous Theory
Marxism
Critical Theory
Settler Colonial Studies
Postcolonial Theory
Social Theory
Publications
Rata, A., Brayne, G., & Barber, S. (2023). Māori sovereignty or death. Decolonization of Criminology & Justice, 5(1), 5-30. doi: 10.24135/dcj.v5i1.57
Naepi, S., & Barber, S. (Eds.). (2022). New Zealand Sociology, 37(1) [Special Issue: When Mana Whenua and Mana Moana make knowledge]. [Guest Editors].
Bell, A., Barber, S., Matthewman, S., & Naepi, S. (2022, December). Reimagining a post-crisis (sic) sociology. Plenary presentation at the Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (SAANZ) Conference: Now what? Reimagining hope, 'truth' and equality, Auckland, New Zealand.
Barber, S., & Naepi, S. (2022). Introduction. New Zealand Sociology, 37(1), 1-19. [Editorial].
Barber, S. (2022). The settler baggage of abstraction. Knowledge Cultures, 10(3), 12-34.