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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Conflict recovery in families: Why inevitable conflict does not have to be detrimental.

Recipient(s): Associate Professor NC Overall | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr AME Henderson | PI | The University of Auckland
ER Peterson | AI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: Family conflict has widespread damaging effects, but avoiding conflict makes problems worse. Indeed, parents’ conflict engagement is often necessary to improve serious problems and may model effective problem solving to children. What is crucial, then, is identifying how parents can mitigate the damage and enhance the potential benefits of family conflict. This research will test a new model that identifies parents’ ability to recover from conflict and resume cooperative goals as pivotal in defining whether inter-parental conflict damages versus enhances family wellbeing and children’s development. Families will participate in a comprehensive multi-method study that will detail how and why parents’ conflict engagement and conflict recovery impact parents and children immediately and across time. The study extends standard measures of family functioning with advanced behavioural assessments of (1) parents’ conflict engagement and conflict recovery within family interactions, and (2) children’s emotional and social competence. We predict that parents’ conflict engagement combined with conflict recovery will be key to improving family relationships and promoting adaptive emotion regulation and social functioning in children. This innovative research will initiate an important shift in conflict research that will reveal how to help sustain families and enrich children’s development in the face of inevitable conflict.

Total Awarded: $840,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Associate Professor NC Overall

Panel: EHB

Project ID: 17-UOA-280


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Confronting the contradictions of New Zealand's embedded neoliberalism in a post-neoliberal era

Recipient(s): Professor J Kelsey | PI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: Over the past twenty-five years New Zealand’s economy, society and governance have been reorganised according to a pro-market paradigm that is firmly embedded in the country’s laws, institutions and international treaty obligations. Recently, the hegemony of the neoliberal paradigm, already challenged by climate change, energy scarcity and enduring poverty, has been shattered as governments respond to a systemic financial meltdown and emerging global recession through intervention and re-regulation. This research aims to generate debate about future directions in New Zealand’s law, policy and governance by theorising the concept of post-neoliberalism and empirically examining the challenges that poses for embedded neoliberalism.

Total Awarded: $298,667

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Professor J Kelsey

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 09-UOA-212


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: Conserving small island populations of endangered New Zealand birds: can a 'Swiss Family Robinson' dilemma be avoided?

Recipient(s): Professor JV Briskie | PI | University of Canterbury
Professor BW Kempenaers | AI | Max Planck Institute

Public Summary: Just like the 'Swiss Family Robinson' many endangered birds in New Zealand are marooned on small and isolated islands. Small population size (termed a bottleneck) increases the risk of inbreeding, and can lead to loss of genetic diversity and an increased risk of extinction. One proposed solution to the loss of genetic variation that accompanies population bottlenecks is the use of 'genetic rescue', a process in which outbred individuals (donors) are translocated into a bottlenecked population. Our objective is to assess the ability of 'genetic rescue' to restore and maintain genetic variation in populations in which population growth is restricted and in which the options for introducing outbred donors are limited. These conditions are especially relevant to endangered birds in New Zealand, which have few outbred populations to use as donors, and the small size of their island refuges set a cap on population size. We will use the South Island robin as a model system to assess both the theoretical predictions and long-term practical effectiveness of using inbred donors to 'rescue' endangered species. The results of our study will allow us to determine whether genetic rescue has lasting benefits for the survival of endangered species.

Total Awarded: $805,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Professor JV Briskie

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 15-UOC-038


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: Constant coconuts: a history of a versatile commodity in the Pacific world

Recipient(s): Professor JA Bennett | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Within the humid tropics, along the shorelines of atolls and high islands, the coconut palm flourishes, providing food, medicines, cosmetics, and household items for myriad Pacific societies. Yet no commodity history of the coconut exists. As a pathway to understanding globalisation, this research will analyse how from c.1840 onwards, products from the “nut” became commodities, how their production and consumption affected individual communities, power relations, mobility, culture, economies, and environment within the Pacific world and beyond. It will consider why, for most Island societies, the coconut became often the sole export staple, and the consequences of such dependency. A key focus is the fluctuating relationship between production and natural conditions, such as rainfall, as well as external challenges, such as declining markets, which tested indigenous agency. Recently, the coconut’s value as a source of biofuel and health and beauty products has significantly revived production. While the distant past is mainly recorded in archives, this network of producers, marketers, governments, and consumers is accessible to ethnographic methods, such as extended observation. The planned book will combine two perspectives: a) commodity chain analysis to trace economic and social linkages; b) ethnographic investigation. Archival and other documentary research will provide evidence for both.

Total Awarded: $710,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Professor JA Bennett

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 14-UOO-152


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Constituent Power and the Law

Recipient(s): Dr I Colon-Rios | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: Constitutional theorists use the term ‘constituent power’ to refer to the popular power to create a constitution. Unlike the ‘constituted powers’ of the ordinary institutions of government, constituent power has traditionally been seen as an extra-legal or revolutionary force. This project is about the relationship between constituent power and the law: it examines the concept from a legal perspective. This approach will raise suspicion among some legal academics. After all, constituent power is about a people who creates a constitution extra-legally, acting outside the legal system’s rules of change. Nevertheless, the concept of constituent power has been used by judges, government officials, jurists, and citizens in different jurisdictions to challenge or justify the legal validity of governmental and popular action. By studying the functions played by constituent power in the constitutional law of various countries, this project will consider the extent to which constituent power should be understood as a concept that, like the 'rule of law' or 'parliamentary sovereignty', is not part of positive law but can be used to assess the legal acceptability of political action. Given constituent power’s demand for heightened popular participation in constitutional change, the answer to that question can have profound constitutional implications.

Total Awarded: $420,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr I Colon-Rios

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 16-VUW-193


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: Constraining and buffering evolution: How do complex gene networks evolve?

Recipient(s): Assoc Prof P Dearden | PI | University of Otago
Dr MJ Wilson | AI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Studies of the genetics of the evolution of animal form suggest that the diversity of life arises from the use of conserved genes in different ways. Genes don’t, however, act in isolation, but in complex networks. In this proposal we aim to understand how genes change their role in the evolution of a complex network, insect segmentation, how that change is buffered by the network, and how that might constrain, or confer diversity. This project aims to explore the evolution of animal diversity, allowing us to better understand how evolution shapes all species, including ourselves.

Total Awarded: $728,696

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Assoc Prof P Dearden

Panel: CMP & EEB

Project ID: 10-UOO-168


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: Constraints on SQL data: foundations for a data-intensive society

Recipient(s): Assoc Prof S Link | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr H Koehler | PI | N-Squared Software

Public Summary: Constraints define the world we live in. Database systems manage data about a domain of interest in our world. Hence, effective data management requires data to satisfy the constraints that define the domain of interest. In practice, most database systems adopt the industry standard for managing data, i.e. the Structured Query Language (SQL). In theory, constraints have mostly been investigated in Ted Codd’s Turing Award winning model of relations. This model entertains constraints on only very special instances of SQL data. In general, constraints on SQL data have been ignored. This distinct disparity between database theory and practice restrains the effectiveness of data management. Using algorithm engineering, discrete mathematics, logic and complexity theory we will establish a robust theory of constraints on SQL data. We will identify classes of constraints that can both: express fundamental properties of SQL data and be maintained efficiently by database systems. Utilizing these insights we will unleash original techniques for requirement acquisition, database design, and data processing. Our findings enable data engineers to effectively manage not just the structure but also the semantics of their domain of interest. Thus, we will establish a foundation for constraints that advances any data-intensive society, including New Zealand.

Total Awarded: $352,174

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Assoc Prof S Link

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 11-VUW-135


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Consuming kids: The impact of marketing ‘health’ to children

Recipient(s): Dr DA Powell | PI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: Global concerns about childhood obesity and the negative effects of marketing junk food have created a new opportunity for corporations: the marketing of healthy products and lifestyles to children. Whilst there is a large body of literature examining the relationship between unhealthy food marketing and childhood obesity, relatively little is known about how the rapid turn to marketing healthy products and lifestyles influences children. This study will provide the first in-depth conceptualisation and analysis of how marketing healthy products and lifestyles shapes children’s health knowledge, health practices and health identities. This includes a critical examination of the ‘Coca-Colonisation’ of health: how ‘other’ ways of understanding health may be created, maintained, or subjugated by contemporary marketing policies and practices. Informed by critical ethnography, this project uses an innovative child-centred methodological approach. Children will use wearable cameras to create visual images at diverse sites, including homes, schools, and sports clubs. The rich analysis of the evidence will provide original insights into the attempts of corporations and their various partners to market the concept of health to children in Aotearoa, as well as how children may actually take up these health messages in unpredictable, even unhealthy, ways.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr DA Powell

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 17-UOA-088


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Contiguity theory for set-parametric problems of statistics

Recipient(s): Professor EV Khmaladze | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: When testing a statistical hypothesis, how small deviations from it can be detected and with what certainty is one of the major questions of statistics. Powerful methods have been developed in the last three decades within statistical 'contiguity theory'.

However, if the hypothesis is about geometric objects like a shape - the shape of an ore deposit site, or a contamination area, or another obscure form - then we do not have the necessary answers. They were impeded by major theoretical difficulties.

Recently, with some of these difficulties resolved, there is a prospect of major statistical advances. If successful, the project will give spatial statistics new and very powerful tools.

Total Awarded: $417,778

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Professor EV Khmaladze

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 09-VUW-115


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: Control of equilibria in queueing networks with selfish routing

Recipient(s): Dr I Ziedins | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr M Holmes | AI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: In many networks, individuals travelling through the network make their own routing decisions without regard for others (for instance, in traffic and communications networks). Networks with selfish routing can experience very poor performance with long delays and queues, and, paradoxically, delays may even increase when extra capacity is added to the system (for instance, by adding new routes, or more capacity on already existing routes). We will investigate the performance and control of queueing networks where individuals can choose their own route from source to destination given full or partial knowledge of the current state of the network; and the extent to which a simple mechanism, such as giving individuals more information about the state of the system, can control poor behaviour.

Total Awarded: $404,348

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr I Ziedins

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 11-UOA-297


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