Pacific Cultures research: What we’re working on

This event explores the entangled relationships between Aotearoa New Zealand, Germany and Sāmoa through a series of talks by museum professionals, university scholars and artists.

This project aims to enhance museum catalogue records and develop digital maps to contextualise taonga; enhancing their visibility and improving associated biographies, which then allows communities to utilise and share these resources, as well as support museum collections and knowledge.

Research and publication of a book on the art of Pacific tapa cloth in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

A co-collecting project exploring how Pacific peoples remember their post-war migration to New Zealand to fill the labour shortages of a rapidly growing economy.

Researching and updating the 2012 publication, Tangata o le Moana – New Zealand and the people of the Pacific.

The project hypothesizes that experiences of Samoanness are spatially embedded - in landscapes, journeys, and multiple localities. They are also simultaneously, yet temporally, negotiated - through memories, narratives, and genealogies.