This morning the Royal Society Te Apārangi announced the results of the latest Marsden Fund round, with three University of Waikato researchers successfully securing funding:
University of Waikato Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Professor Bryony James says the Marsden Fund supports researchers to explore bold ideas that can have significant impact on the future of their discipline. This funding over the next three years will help our researchers make advances in linguistics, Indigenous business and behavioural ecology.
“These achievements are a reflection on not only the excellence of our researchers and their impact in their disciplines, but on the teams of University staff who support the development of research funding proposals, both successful and unsuccessful. I am immensely proud of the work they all do,” Professor James says.
“It’s also important to thank and acknowledge the University of Waikato academics who are Marsden Fund panellists. Assessing proposals is an intensive and challenging process, one which we are well represented in.”
Marsden Fund (Standard): Dr Andreea Calude, ‘Two languages in my kete’
Dr Andreea Calude received a Marsden Fund to investigate the way children incorporate te reo Māori words into their language.
Dr Calude will investigate how the next generation of New Zealand English users, children, incorporate te reo Māori loanwords in their use of language, and how they perceive users of these words. This is an opportunity for a sociolinguistic development case-study of the way words are borrowed between languages by experimentally studying those who drive language change and innovation - young people.
Associate Investigators: Professor Hēmi Whaanga (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe, Waitaha), Massey University, Dr Eline Zenner, KU Leuven, Dr Laura Rosseel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Marsden Fund (Fast Start): Dr Jason Mika, ‘Manahau: In search of the original Māori firm and its philosophy of management’
Dr Jason Mika has been awarded a Marsden Fast Start grant to answer questions around what it means to be a Māori firm, a Māori manager, and to manage a business in a Māori way.
Dr Mika (Tuhoe, Ngāti Awa, Whakatōhea, Ngāti Kahungunu) will seek to answer questions around what it means to be a Māori firm, a Māori manager, and to manage a business in a Māori way, by constructing a kaupapa Māori theory of the firm grounded in Indigenous management philosophy. This will include analysis of Māori business data and holding wānanga with rangatahi, pakeke, and kaumātua who engage in entrepreneurial activity.
Associate Investigator: Dr Kiri Dell (Ngāti Porou), University of Auckland
Marsden Fund (Fast Start): Dr Chrissie Painting, ‘A complex systems approach to understanding the evolution of mating systems’
Dr Chrissie Painting received a Marsden Fast Start to investigate the evolutionary puzzle posed by monogynous mating systems.
Dr Painting will investigate the evolutionary puzzle posed by monogynous mating systems, which are contrary to the typical behaviour for maximising the reproductive success of a species. She will develop an evolutionary framework and apply it to a comparative dataset gained from quantifying elements across populations of Dolomedes fishing spiders with varying mating system dynamics.
Associate Investigators: Professor Eileen Hebets, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Associate Professor Matjaž Kuntner, National Institute of Biology Slovenia, Dr Dion O’Neale, University of Auckland.
University of Waikato academics are also on research teams for Marsden Fund projects led by other institutions:
- Dr Jaimie Veale, Associate Investigator: ‘It takes a village: Picturing family support for transgender young people in Aotearoa’
- Dr Raven Cretney, Associate Investigator: ‘The Residential Red Zone (RRZ) as Futures Lab: Placemaking in the Anthropocene’
