Pacific Studies department

With islands already being inundated, Pacific nations can be seen as some of the first victims of climate change and rising sea levels, as well as worthy and urgent beneficiaries of global attempts to achieve the United Nation’s internationally-agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

What does it mean to be a Māori or Polynesian male in Aotearoa New Zealand today? How is that shaped?

Can the path to a sustainable future be found in the past? Global experts on water policy and management in the Pacific gathered on 7 February at The Piano in Christchurch for Tauhere UC Connect public talk, The Path to a Sustainable Future.

Dr Christina Tausa, Research Manager at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury (UC), wants to see the Global North commit to the promises of the Paris Agreement at COP27, the 27th annual UN meeting on climate, which started on 6 November in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Not all students in Aotearoa New Zealand are free to dream about their future it seems, with many limiting themselves to harmful and outdated gender and ethnicity-based stereotypes.

An upcoming exhibition exploring the ancient art of female tattooing in Fiji is being presented by the University of Canterbury’s new Pacific artist in residence.

It’s not often a distinguished professor offers to explain the academic theory of ‘Bullshitology’ to the world, but a public talk at the University of Canterbury offers exactly that, livestreamed and free to attend.