New Research Assistant for Te Tumu
Gianna Leoni
Te Tumu is really pleased that Gianna Leoni (Ngati Kuri and Ngai Takoto) has now joined the staff as a Research Assistant for 2015. Gianna has long been a “fixture” at Te Tumu as a student and tutor, and is also currently putting the last touches on her doctoral thesis on the use of te reo Māori in government departments. As RA, Gianna will be working primarily with the editors of Te Tumu’s new textbook (currently being written) for its MAOR102: Māori Society paper. Gianna will also be assisting Te Tumu staff with their own individual research projects.
Nau mai, haere mai, Gianna.
In the meantime Gianna is also helping coordinate Te Tumu’s 25th Anniversary, which will run on 28-29 May. This is going to be a great weekend for former and present staff and students, and will be immediately followed by the 25th Anniversary of the Māori Centre/Te Huka Mātauraka (30-31 May). If you haven’t already registered for these events, click here now.
Upcoming Te Tumu seminar
Professor Patricia O’Brien, an ARC Future Fellow based at the Australian National University is currently visiting Otago, and will be giving a seminar to Te Tumu.
In 2012 Professor O’Brien was the JD Stout Fellow in New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and in 2011 she was the Jay I. Kislak Fellow in American Studies at the John W. Kluge Centre at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. From 2001-2013 she was visiting Associate Professor in the Centre for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She is the author of The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific (Seattle, 2006).
Professor O’Brien will be presenting on material from a current research project, a biography on the Samoan nationalist leader Ta’isi O.F. Nelson.
Her seminar ‘The Trials of Mr Nelson: Ta’isi O. F. Nelson and Indigenous Resistance in Interwar Samoa’ will be held in Cen3 (Central Library) at 2.30pm, March 23rd. This will be followed by tea, coffee and biscuits in the Te Tumu dining room.
We hope to see you there.
