Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand

ResearchRangahau

Discover our ongoing, multidisciplinary programme of research, and find out how we can support you in your own investigations.

Our research experts work in five major curatorial areas, and aim to make their material accessible to everyone.

  • A woman holding a painting wearing blue gloves

    Art research

    Find out about our various avenues of art research and who we are.

  • Pacific storeroom tour, 2015. Photograph by Michael Hall. Te Papa

    Pacific Cultures research

    We seek to understand the local and global histories of Pacific peoples, and to document these stories through our collection.

  • Several women wearing black and wreaths on their heads made of kawakawa leaves are sitting around a cloak on some boxes in front of them.

    Repatriation

    In 2003, the government mandated Te Papa to develop a formal programme for the repatriation of Māori and Moriori ancestral remains from international institutions to iwi. Here you can learn about the repatriation process, see all the repatriations to date, and meet the team.

  • Black and white photo of a man putting a photo in a photo album

    Researchers

    Find out about our Researchers and their roles at Te Papa.

  • Two hands weaving green flax on a table.

    Te Papa audience research

    In 2022 and 2023, Te Papa undertook research regarding usage and presentation of te reo Māori across various cultural websites, and exploring access to and consumption of museum content by Pacific Peoples. 

  • Internal pages, photograph by Michael Hall. From The Fishes of New Zealand, edited by Clive Roberts, Andrew Stewart, and Carl Struthers, 2015

    Research publications

    Access our research journal, Tuhinga, and other curatorial papers and books published by Te Papa.

  • A person on a laptop looking at images on Te Papa's Collections Online website

    Datasets

    Te Papa releases these datasets openly to allow others to analyse and build on Te Papa’s research findings.