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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: Managing monks: Buddhism, law and monastic control in Southern Asia

Recipient(s): Dr B Schonthal | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Buddhist monks in South and Southeast Asia are widely perceived to embody calmness, compassion and pacifism. Indeed, many of the region's most influential advocates for peace have been Buddhist monks. However, since 2010, Sri Lanka and Myanmar have seen the rise of several new monastic groups that preach messages of hatred and intolerance against religious minorities. This study asks how and why this has occurred. Rather than focusing on the roles played by particular monks, ideologies or politicians, as others have done, this project asks broader questions about how and why Buddhist monastic law--the ecclesiastical regulatory system through which monastic fraternities supervise the discipline and conduct of monks--failed to stop or constrain these groups. In doing this, the project will not only provide a fuller account of the rise of these aggressive monastic groups, it will produce the first detailed study of monastic legal practice in contemporary Sri Lanka, while also helping to advance understandings of the relationships between religious law and civil law in the contemporary world.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Dr B Schonthal

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 15-UOO-154


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Māori, Catastrophic Events, and Collective Development of Culture-based Disaster Management Theory and Practice

Recipient(s): Dr CM Kenney | PI | Massey University Wellington

Public Summary: Disaster research in Aotearoa has highlighted Māori resilience in post-disaster contexts. During adversity, Māori enact cultural guardianship to ensure the wellbeing of residents and resources in their regions, yet research has not identified how Māori attributes (knowledges, values and traditional practices) may enhance emergency management during catastrophic events. This research pioneers Māori disaster management theory through exploring how Māori attributes can act as cultural technologies to manage catastrophic disasters. These attributes will be theorised and assembled within a disaster management framework that is culturally acceptable and widely applicable. The collaboratively developed Māori disaster management framework will constitute a platform for advancing Māori aspirations in regards to disaster risk reduction knowledge, emergency management capabilities and novel citizen science.Conceptual gaps in the literature will be addressed through bringing together mātauranga Māori and disaster sociology, in this way inspiring new directions in disaster theory and research as well as innovation within the national disaster management infrastructure.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University Wellington

Contact Person: Dr CM Kenney

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 17-MAU-048


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Māori, Pasifika Youth and Justice: International Comparisons

Recipient(s): Dr RD Webb | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr TM Suaalii-Sauni | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr JM Tauri | AI | University of Wollongong

Public Summary: This sociological and comparative criminological research project will examine Māori and Samoan experiences of youth justice, in a study across three different settler-colonial criminal justice jurisdictions: Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the USA. This project attempts to build a deeper understanding of interactions between criminal justice processes, youth, whānau/aiga (family) dynamics, wellbeing, cultural identity, and indigenous knowledge in the three jurisdictions. Using both qualitative social science and indigenous Māori and Samoan research frameworks, this research specifically investigates the systemic, institutional, social, cultural, political, economic and historical drivers that shape the individual and collective stories of these young people and their whānau/aiga, and the youth justice systems they are subject to. Including a cross-jurisdictional focus enables us to offer new insights of international significance into indigenous and ethnic minority experiences of youth justice in NZ, as well as members of the diaspora communities residing in Australia (Māori and Samoan) and the West Coast of the United States (Samoan). The overall aim of the research is to reveal how communities experience settler-colonial justice systems, and the response to these systems that can be developed to recognise and meet their values and specific needs.

Total Awarded: $695,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr RD Webb

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 16-UOA-225


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: Maori-medium educational scholarship

Recipient(s): Dr GM Stewart | PI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: Te reo Maori remains one of few indigenous languages ever accorded official language status: and partly in recognition of this status the standard language policy of universities in Aotearoa New Zealand allows for any essay or dissertation to be submitted in Maori, given suitable assessment arrangements are made. Alongside other equity developments in tertiary education for Maori, such as university marae, Wananga, and immersion-Maori teaching degree programmes, this language policy appears to support Maori aspirations and language diversity, but lacks the support of any theoretical or practical knowledge base about undertaking academic teaching, learning and research in Maori. Maori students and their supervisors are sometimes placed in jeopardy by this lack of knowledge and the ad hoc nature of provision for Maori-medium scholarship. Given fundamentally different worldviews between Maori and Western knowledge bases, why should we assume that scholarship can be translated into Maori and other indigenous languages without changing academic criteria and outcomes? What is gained and risked by Maori-medium scholarship entering the academy? Framed by such questions, this research will reveal, for the first time, the tensions inherent in using te reo Maori as a language medium for university-level teaching, scholarship and research.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr GM Stewart

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 14-UOA-117


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: Mapping neuroplasticity in the brain

Recipient(s): Associate Professor RM Empson | PI | University of Otago
Dr AN Clarkson | AI | University of Otago
Professor T Knopfel | AI | Imperial College

Public Summary: The brain contains millions of nerve cells connected together to create densely packed networks much like the streets of a big city. Like city streets, the brain’s connection networks have the capacity to change throughout life and in response to brain injury such as a stroke, a phenomenon called “neuroplasticity”. Here we aim to use exciting new imaging technology to map neuroplasticity in a specific brain network that is critical for goal-directed movement, and often damaged in stroke. Our findings could help identify how network neuroplasticity can be harnessed for brain self-repair and so drive innovation of brain rehabilitation strategies.

Total Awarded: $820,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Associate Professor RM Empson

Panel: BMS

Project ID: 14-UOO-262


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Mapping the Cosmic Web with the Murchison Widefield Array

Recipient(s): Associate Professor M Johnston-Hollitt | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: We have detected the first evidence of diffuse radio emission from shocks in the cosmic web – the filamentary structure in which matter in the Universe is distributed. This long sought-after emission is a key prediction of large-scale structure formation theory. We propose to extend our detections with a combined radio and optical survey in the Southern hemisphere. Assembling several examples of emission from the cosmic web will provide an unprecedented resource for confirming our understanding of mass assembly in the Universe, acceleration of particles in low-density shocks, and cosmic magnetic fields on the largest scales.

Total Awarded: $870,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Associate Professor M Johnston-Hollitt

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 16-VUW-104


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: Mapping the evolution of a key glycolytic enzyme

Recipient(s): Dr RCJ Dobson | PI | University of Canterbury
Dr TF Cooper | AI | University of Houston

Public Summary: Adaptation is the process by which a population moves towards a phenotype that represents a better fit to the environment. We know a lot about the consequences of adaptation, but little of the underlying molecular causes of adaptation; that is, how do mutations in a gene act to change an organism’s phenotype.

In a laboratory experiment, 12 replicate bacterial populations were evolved from a common ancestor in a glucose-limiting environment. Over time, the fitness of each population increased and, interestingly, mutations concentrated in relatively few genes. For the gene that encodes pyruvate kinase, an enzyme central to the regulation of energy metabolism, mutations occurred independently in all 12 populations—a signature that they are likely to be adaptive.

Why is this enzyme a focal point for adaptive mutations? This question demands a molecular ‘picture’ of the adapted pyruvate kinase enzymes, linked with fitness and metabolic information. To achieve this, an interdisciplinary team will integrate biochemical, protein structural, metabolic and evolutionary experiments to assess the effect of the adaptive mutations at these levels. Empirical data addressing why some mutations are adaptive (but most are not) will have major implications for our ability to predict and understand the outcome of evolution.

Total Awarded: $250,435

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Dr RCJ Dobson

Panel: PCB

Project ID: 10-UOC-062


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: Matroid minors

Recipient(s): Prof G Whittle | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: The discrete world is fundamentally different from the continuous. Classical mathematics has primarily focussed on continuous structures, but computers are discrete machines, DNA is discrete, and the internet gives us information that is digital, that is, gives us discrete information. Matroids are mathematical structures that describe the geometry that underlies discrete objects. This geometry is intrinsically different from the world described by classical mathematics.

One way to obtain a matroid is from a structure called a finite field. Matroids obtained from the 2-element field are particularly natural to your computer. But matroids obtained from other finite fields are also of great interest.

This project seeks to resolve two fundamental conjectures on matroids. We aim to prove that matroids obtained from a finite field are well-quasi-ordered. In other words, we aim to prove that, in any infinite list of such matroids, there is one that is a substructure of another. We also aim to prove Rota's Conjecture that, for any finite field, there is a finite set of matroids that can be used to determine if a matroid can be obtained from that field. These two conjectures are widely regarded as the most famous in matroid theory.

Total Awarded: $534,783

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Prof G Whittle

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 10-VUW-075


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: Matroid minors

Recipient(s): Professor GP Whittle | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: A finite field is an algebraic system, similar to the familiar real numbers, but with only a finite number of elements. Matroids are finite geometries, and, just as we are able to describe geometrical configurations in the world around us by using coordinates from the real number system, some matroids can be obtained by using coordinates from finite fields. But which matroids? Rota conjectured in 1970 that the matroids we can obtain from a given finite field can be characterised by a finite set of obstacles. The set of obstacles will depend on the field. This is undoubtedly the most famous conjecture in matroid theory. Jim Geelen, Bert Gerards and I are confident that we have a sound strategy for proving Rota's Conjecture. Converting this strategy into correct, formal mathematics will be a massive undertaking. That is the primary goal of this project.

Total Awarded: $521,739

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Professor GP Whittle

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 13-VUW-009


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: Maximising success in a new land: the role of Wairau Bar in the systematic colonisation of New Zealand by Polynesians

Recipient(s): Professor RK Walter | PI | University of Otago
Mr RC Jacomb | AI | University of Otago
Professor MI Weisler | AI | The University of Queensland

Public Summary: The colonisation of Aotearoa by East Polynesians was the final step in the prehistoric human diaspora that began in Africa 60,000 years ago. It was also the most remarkable, involving the movement of at least 400 people across 3000 km of open ocean, from a tropical to a cool-temperate environment. Apart from the technological achievement of getting here, this required radical reorganisation of cultural behaviours. This project investigates a new theory for the Polynesian colonisation of Aotearoa that fits recent discoveries in archaeology and biomolecular sciences. Current models emphasise a lengthy adaptation phase followed by expansion from a founder population. They assume the process was slow and gradual and was based on demographic pressures. We argue that colonisation was a deliberate, planned migration from an interaction sphere in Hawaiki that involved specific social and behavioural strategies for exploring the country and establishing viable populations. We believe that the process began with the establishment of a base settlement and that the best candidate for such a place is the extraordinary Wairau Bar site, where the richest, most diverse assemblage of early East Polynesian artefacts was discovered. This model more closely reflects oral tradition and is compatible with contemporary migration theory.

Total Awarded: $773,913

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Professor RK Walter

Panel: EHB

Project ID: 13-UOO-181


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