Kia ora koutou,
It’s been an embarrassingly long time since we last updated this blog! Many apologies for the silence from us.
We are absolutely thrilled to announce the publication of the book, “Fierce Hope: Youth Activism in Aotearoa” published by Bridget Williams Books. We’ve all held a copy in our hot little hands and are excited to have this work out in the world. You should be able to find it in good book stores this week. We are keen to catch up with each group in the new year to talk about the findings in the book. Here is the link to the press release, where you can read about what the publisher has to say, and a trailer where Karen talks about the book.
Along with the book, our recent work includes three academic articles and presentations at the Ambivalent Activism symposium hosted by the University of Edinburgh in September and the Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (SAANZ) conference in Auckland in early December.
We published an article “‘So people wake up, what are we gonna do?’: From paralysis to action in decolonizing activism” in a special edition of Ethnicities Journal earlier this year. In this article we proposed a continuum of engagement to help understand how settler activists do decolonial work without relying on Māori to guide every step. The article is open access and available here.
A collaborative article with members of InsideOUT Kōaro “Creating a culture of care to support rainbow activists’ well-being: an exemplar from Aotearoa/New Zealand” has been published in the Journal of LGBT Youth. The article describes how InsideOUT Kōaro creates a culture of care to support members’ well-being. If you are interested in reading more, here is the article.
InsideOUT Kōaro have also developed a resource outlining how they incorporate values into the practices, structures and culture of their organisation. This resource is called ‘Activating our Values’ and is intended to provide some insights and tips for other groups working with young volunteers and activists. This will be available from InsideOUT Kōaro in Februrary, 2023.
We have also had another academic article accepted by the journal Social Movements Studies and this will be available sometime in the new year (date TBA). This article is called “The Connective is Communal: Hybrid activism in online and offline spaces.” The research showed how online and offline modes of activism bolstered each other, and both were useful for connecting with other activists and maintaining a collective.
Recently Carisa and Kyle attended the New Zealand Sociology conference and Carisa presented a paper about ambivalent activism. This built on a presentation Carisa and Karen did in September for the Ambivalent Activism webinar series hosted by the University of Edinburgh. This will be part of an edited volume next year.
We are also working on an article about volunteering and activism and how/if they differ and another article about the role of hope in activism. The work goes on.
We are keen to find ways to share our research with your group so let us know what would be most useful. Email karen.nairn@otago.ac.nz.
This will be our last mass email so if you would like to keep in touch about the research, sign up for our blog https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/youngactivists/.
Thank you again for being part of our research – we value all you have contributed highly.
All the very best for summer holidays!
Ngā mihi,
Karen, Jude, Carisa, Kyle and Joanna
