Emma Powell, Our people, Te Tumu, University of Otago, New Zealand

Emma Powell image BCA, BAHons(VUW), MA(Auckland), PhD(VUW)

Contact

Office 3S9a Richardson Building, South Tower
Tel +64 3 479 8301
Email emma.powell@otago.ac.nz

Research

Emma has completed research on Pacific anglophone literatures, mostly in the Polynesian region and more specifically on writing and cultural traditions of the Cook Islands and the Eastern Pacific. She has written about the influence of Cook Islands Māori writers in her graduate research and was a researcher on Associate Professor Alice Te Punga Somerville’s Marsden Project Writing the New World (2020). She published parts of her research in this area in Mana: 50 years of Cook Islands creative writing (2018).

Emma’s doctoral work in Pacific Studies explored the genealogical practices of Cook Islands Māori people. She took a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to that study and argued for the ways genealogical praxes can help shape indigenous historiography, and notions of nationhood and futurity.

Her current research work focuses on the political, social, cultural and genealogical imbrications of New Zealand’s imperial Realm. She also explores notions of exchange, correspondence and genealogical connection across the Eastern Polynesian region.

Teaching

MAOR 102 Māori Society (Convener)
INGS 501 Indigenous Theory and Method
INDV 301 Māori and Indigenous Development

Distinctions

2020: International Studies Association, Teresia Teaiwa Award
2020: Royal Society Te Apārangi, Moana Oceania Te Koha Prize
2019: Polynesian Society Inc, Honorary Membership
2018: Victoria University of Wellington Doctoral Scholarship

Funding

2020: Victoria University of Wellington Joint Research Committee, Research Grant
2019: Polynesian Society Inc, Bruce Grandison Biggs Grant
2019: Victoria University of Wellington Joint Research Committee, Research Grant

^ Top of page

Publications

Powell, E. (2022). [Review of the book Polynesia, 900-1600: An overview of the history of Aotearoa, Rēkohu, and Rapa Nui]. New Zealand Journal of History, 56(2), 117-118. [Book Review].

Powell, E. (2022, November). Puka(puka): Books and the Pacific. Plenary presentation at the University of Otago Centre for the Book Symposium: Books and the Pacific, [Hybrid].

Powell, E., & Newman, E. (2022). Growing into: Pacific intellectual genealogies and indigenous development. Pacific Dynamics, 6(2), 104-117. doi: 10.26021/10639

Coto-Solano, R., Nicholas, S. A., Datta, S., Quint, V., Wills, P., Powell, E. N., … Feldman, I. (2022). Development of automatic speech recognition for the documentation of Cook Islands Māori. Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation (LREC). (pp. 3872-3882). European Language Resources Association (ELRA). Retrieved from http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2022/index.html

Powell, E., & Johnson, M. (2021, December). Empire, indigeneity and the archive in the New Zealand realm. Verbal presentation at the Museum as Archive Conference: Using the Past in the Present and Future, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Powell, E. E. N. (2018). Introduction. In J. Gragg, P. Thompson, N. Papatua & R. Dixon (Eds.), Mana: 50 years of Cook Islands creative writing. (pp. 2-11). Rarotonga, Cook Islands: University of the South Pacific Press.

Chapter in Book - Research

Powell, E., & Newman, E. (2022). Growing into: Pacific intellectual genealogies and indigenous development. Pacific Dynamics, 6(2), 104-117. doi: 10.26021/10639

Journal - Research Article

Powell, E. E. N. (2020). Naming the Cook Islands: Articulation theory and 'akapap'anga. Pacific Studies, 43(2), 119-141.

Journal - Research Article

Powell, E. (2022). [Review of the book Polynesia, 900-1600: An overview of the history of Aotearoa, Rēkohu, and Rapa Nui]. New Zealand Journal of History, 56(2), 117-118. [Book Review].

Journal - Research Other

Powell, E. (2020). [Review of the book New Oceania: Modernisms and modernity in the Pacific]. Journal of New Zealand Studies, 2020(30), 152-154. doi: 10.26686/jnzs.v0iNS30.6503

Journal - Research Other

Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper

Powell, E. (2022, November). Puka(puka): Books and the Pacific. Plenary presentation at the University of Otago Centre for the Book Symposium: Books and the Pacific, [Hybrid].