The University of Otago is a public research collegiate university based in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. Founded in 1869, Otago is New Zealand's oldest university and one of the oldest universities in Oceania.
The University of Waikato, established in 1964, is a public research university located in Hamilton, New Zealand. An additional campus is located in Tauranga. The university performs research in numerous disciplines such as education, social sciences, and management and is an innovator in environmental science, marine and freshwater ecology, engineering and computer science. It offers degrees in health, engineering, computer science, management, Māori and Indigenous Studies, the arts, psychology, social sciences and education.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards, which ran from 1968 to 1995.
Hone Vivian Kouka is a New Zealand playwright. He has written 13 plays, which have been staged in New Zealand and worldwide including Canada, South Africa, New Caledonia and Britain. Kouka's plays have won multiple awards at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, the 'Oscars' of New Zealand theatre. Kouka has also worked as a theatre director and producer. In 2009, Kouka was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to contemporary Māori theatre.
Margaret Shirley Mutu is a Ngāti Kahu leader, author and academic from Karikari, New Zealand and works at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is Māori and her iwi (tribes) are Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua.
Rawinia Ruth Higgins is a New Zealand academic whose research focuses on Māori language and culture.
Jacinta Arianna Ruru is a New Zealand academic and the first Māori professor of law. Ruru is currently a professor at the University of Otago.
Janine Alyth Deaker Hayward is a New Zealand politics academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Otago.
Marewa Glover is a New Zealand public health academic specialising in smoking cessation. She has worked at the University of Auckland and been a full professor at Massey University. She set up the Centre for Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty and Smoking (COREISS) in 2018.
Poia Rewi is a professor and the former head of Te Tumu: School of Maori, Pacific, and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is known for his work in the areas of the revitalisation of the Māori language and whaikorero. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Matire Louise Ngarongoa Harwood is a New Zealand clinical researcher and trainee general practitioner. She is an associate professor at the University of Auckland. Harwood was the 2017 New Zealand L'Oréal UNESCO For Women in Science Fellow. Her expertise is in Māori health, focussed on reducing health inequity by improving indigenous health and well-being.
Michelle Thompson-Fawcett is a New Zealand Māori academic of Ngati Whatua descent and is a full professor at the University of Otago. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Paul Tapsell is a New Zealand academic, of Ngāti Whakaue and Ngāti Raukawa descent and as of 2020 is Professor of Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University. In 2024 Tapsell was elected a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Suzanne Georgina Pitama is a New Zealand academic, is Māori, of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Whare descent and as of 2020 is a full professor at the University of Otago in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Claire Winfield Ngamihi Charters is a New Zealand Māori academic from the Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi and Tainui tribes. She specialises in indigenous peoples’ rights in international and constitutional law. She is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland and co-director of the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Law.
Alice Te Punga Somerville is a poet, scholar and irredentist. Dr Te Punga Somerville is the author of Once were Pacific: Māori connections to Oceania which provides the first critical analysis of the disconnections and connections between 'Māori' and 'Pacific'. Her research work delves into texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous peoples that tell Indigenous stories in order to go beyond the constraints of the limited stories told about them. In 2023 she won New Zealand's top award for poetry, the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, for her collection Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised.
Priscilla M. Wehi is a New Zealand ethnobiologist and conservation biologist. As at July 2021 she is an associate professor at the University of Otago and on the first of that month officially undertook the role of director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a centre of research excellence in complex systems and data analytics. During the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand Te Pūnaha Matatini scientists have developed mathematical models of the spread of the virus across the country that influence the New Zealand government's response to the outbreak. In 2021 Wehi was awarded the Hill Tinsley Medal.
Lisa Jadwiga Valentina Warrington is a New Zealand theatre studies academic, director, actor and author. She has directed more than 130 productions, and established the Theatre Aotearoa database. In 2014 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Dunedin Theatre Awards, and was three times winner of a New Zealand Listener Best Director award, including one for Tom Scott's The Daylight Atheist.
Angela Cheryl Wanhalla is a professor of history at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Her book about interracial marriage in New Zealand won the 2014 Ernest Scott Prize. Wanhalla was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2022.
Nicola Rowan Wheen is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in national and international environmental law, and environmental law and the Treaty of Waitangi.
