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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: 2017

Title: The impact of massive stars on the lifecycle of galaxies: tracing massive star formation feedback in the nearby Universe

Recipient(s): Dr AF McLeod | PI | University of Canterbury
Dr JE Dale | AI | University of Hertfordshire
Dr DJM Kruijssen | AI | Universität Heidelberg

Public Summary: One of the most fundamental problems in modern astrophysics is constraining the physics driving the matter cycle in galaxies, namely: describing how galaxies turn their gas into stars; how the feedback from these stars regulates the growth of galaxies; and how these processes may have changed with galactic environment and across cosmic time. To date, the physics of massive star formation and the (re)distribution of mass, energy, and metals by massive stellar feedback are the main missing ingredients required to connect the observed galaxy population to models of
galaxy evolution. By exploiting novel and ground-breaking new astronomical instruments and analysis techniques, this project aims at obtaining an observational census of quantities describing the effect of feedback in massive star-forming regions, and, for the first time, directly correlate these to the feedback-driving massive stars. This project will therefore deliver the observational constraints that are crucial to the advancement in the fields of massive star formation feedback and galaxy evolution.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Dr AF McLeod

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 17-UOC-065


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: The impact of maternal arterial remodelling on placental vascular development

Recipient(s): Dr AR Clark | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr JL James | AI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: The placenta is responsible for providing all the nutrients required to allow a healthy baby to develop. However, the mechanisms contributing to the development of a healthy placenta are still not well understood. Abnormalities in the maternal blood vessels supplying the placenta are known to result in developmental delays so it is crucial to understand how this blood supply interacts with the placenta in pregnancy. We propose data-driven computational models of the development of the blood supply to and within the placenta as a means to address the fundamental questions of how changes in maternal blood vessels control key developmental processes and what constitutes normal placental development.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr AR Clark

Panel: EIS

Project ID: 13-UOA-032


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: The importance of cospeciation, host-switching, and geographic isolation in the evolutionary history of a vine and its parasite

Recipient(s): Dr PB Pelser | PI | University of Canterbury
Dr JF Barcelona | AI | University of Canterbury
Dr CEC Gemmill | AI | University of Waikato
Dr AC Manila | AI | Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, Philippines
Prof DL Nickrent | AI | Southern Illinois University
Dr J Wen | AI | Smithsonian Institution

Public Summary: Despite their importance as study systems in evolutionary research, comparatively little is known about the biology of parasitic plants. One of the major gaps in our knowledge of parasitic plants are the drivers and constraints that shape their evolution and hence speciation. This project will contribute to filling this chasm by aiming to identify the factors driving parasitic plant evolution. These studies will use the Philippine species of the enigmatic parasite Rafflesia and its host plants of the vine genus Tetrastigma as a model group. Rafflesia is world-renown for having the largest flowers of all angiosperms and is an icon of tropical plant diversity. It is one of only eight plant genera that live entirely within their hosts and only emerge to produce their flowers. Because of this extremely intimate and dependent association with their host plants, Rafflesia is an excellent subject to study whether speciation in parasitic plants is driven by speciation in host plants (coevolution) or by the colonisation of new host species (host-switching). However, because Rafflesia species are obligate parasites, their geographical distribution is intimately tied to that of their hosts. Geographical isolation may therefore by a third potential driver of diversification in Rafflesia.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Dr PB Pelser

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 11-UOC-081


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: The individual and the state in early Rome

Recipient(s): Dr JH Richardson | PI | Massey University

Public Summary: The city-state of Rome was founded by Romulus and first ruled by kings; later, when the last of those kings abused his position, he was expelled and the Republic established, or so the Romans believed. Although it is deeply problematic and anachronistic in many respects, much of that story is still broadly accepted in modern scholarship. This project argues that the Romans' account of the origins and development of their city-state should be handled with considerable scepticism, and that its anachronistic nature means it may actually reveal something of later Roman political ideas and thought. Moreover, a sceptical assessment of the historicity of their account, an account which takes the centrality of the Roman city-state for granted, makes it possible to give greater significance to the evidence for other social and political groups and ideologies. The picture that emerges is of a world where the city-state was just one idea of social and political organisation and not one to which everyone subscribed. Against this backdrop, it becomes possible to reassess important aspects of early Roman history, and to ask new questions, many relevant to our own times, about states, the reasons for their existence, and the citizens' role in them.

Total Awarded: $320,500

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University

Contact Person: Dr JH Richardson

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 15-MAU-024


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: The influence of early-Maori and ahumoana tawhito (ancient aquaculture) on the toheroa of today

Recipient(s): Dr PM Ross | PI | University of Waikato
Dr BG McFadgen | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr H Smith | AI | Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Public Summary: The impacts of modern human society on marine ecosystems are both significant and well understood. In contrast, the impacts of early humans are virtually unknown. New Zealand, the last major landmass settled by humans, provides an unparalleled opportunity to determine the significance of early human-ecosystem interactions. Maori settled New Zealand as late as the 14th century, meaning that evidence of early-human impacts are less obscured by time in New Zealand than in countries with more prolonged occupation. Genetic analyses (supplemented with Maori environmental knowledge) of toheroa, an endemic shellfish of cultural importance to Maori, have led us to hypothesise that the present-day distribution of this taonga (treasured) species is strongly influenced by historical, human-mediated translocations. This hypothesis will be tested through a multidisciplinary research programme combining archaeology and molecular ecology with Matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge). By examining Maori oral histories alongside archaeological records and toheroa population genetics, we will gain a better understanding of the extent to which early Maori manipulated their marine environment. This research challenges the paradigm that species distributions are largely a consequence of natural processes and recent human activity, and will provide important insights into the early-human component to the ecological theory of species distribution.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Waikato

Contact Person: Dr PM Ross

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 15-UOW-013


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: The inverse sovereignty effect: The new aid agenda in Pacific Island States

Recipient(s): Prof J Overton | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof W Murray | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof V Naidu | AI | University of the South Pacific
Mr G Prinsen | AI | Private

Public Summary: Theories and practices of international aid have stressed the need for the full participation of recipients. This approach has been strengthened by international agreements, such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 which called for 'ownership' of development strategies by recipient agencies. This seemed to promise recipient governments an increased stake in the way aid was used for development and poverty alleviation. However, in practice, the new aid agenda has actually increased demands on recipients with new conditions over the management of aid funds, the setting of development strategies and the meeting of other global obligations. This issue is of particular concern in small Pacific Island states where the small size of government is coupled with increasing demands from donors for consultation, accountability and engagement to create what we argue is an 'inverse sovereignty' effect: despite the rhetoric of ownership and independence, recipient states are actually losing control over their development strategies, policies and programmes. This research studies the aid relationships that have evolved in six Pacific Island countries and seeks lessons so that more effective ways of working can be suggested that take account of both scale and sovereignty.

Total Awarded: $597,070

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Prof J Overton

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 10-VUW-046


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: The irony of spin: complex and competing magnetic and electronic interactions in Fe-based compounds

Recipient(s): Dr GVM Williams | PI | Industrial Research Ltd
Dr AJ Kay | PI | Industrial Research Ltd
Professor JL Tallon | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor J Haase | AI | University of Leipzig
Dr JV Kennedy | AI | GNS Science

Public Summary: We seek to understand superconducting layered iron-based compounds and use novel methods to create new hybrid systems containing iron coordinated layers separated by organic interlayers. Fluctuating magnetic moments are key to understanding these compounds and hence we will also research oxygen ordered SrFeO3-x and related compounds. The associated behaviour is proving to be one of the most difficult problems in physics. We aim to determine the nature of the complex and competing interactions that can result in superconductivity and/or magnetically induced changes in the electrical resistance. Both phenomena are technologically important and current markets exceed one billion dollars.

Total Awarded: $666,667

Duration: 3

Host: Industrial Research Ltd

Contact Person: Dr GVM Williams

Panel: PSE

Project ID: 09-IRL-008


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: The Logic of Ordinary Language

Recipient(s): Associate Professor AA Rini | PI | Massey University Manawatu
Professor MJ Cresswell | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor ED Mares | AI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: In the 20th century, philosophy became a discipline which brought what we now call STEM fields into Humanities. A key figure was Bertrand Russell, originally a mathematician, but who increasingly wanted to show that mathematical rigour can be applied to philosophical problems by means of the mathematical logic developed in the late 19th century. Although logic has been part of philosophy since Aristotle, Russell’s logic was resisted by those who felt it did not fit the questions philosophers were asking. What was needed was someone who could extend Russell’s logic to reflect the concerns of mainstream philosophers.

The answer came from New Zealand’s most famous philosopher, Arthur Norman Prior (1914-1969). What Prior did was extend Russell’s logic to bring tense – past/present/future – into logic. This not only helped the clarification of philosophical issues about time but also proved invaluable in modelling the successive states of a computer program.

Our project will illuminate the significance of Prior’s work in its philosophical context for the first time. Through examining published and unpublished work, correspondence, handwritten notes, and interviews with his surviving contemporaries, we will be better able to understand and appreciate the place of philosophy as a bridge between science and the humanities.

Total Awarded: $630,000

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University Manawatu

Contact Person: Associate Professor AA Rini

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 17-MAU-036


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: The machinery of transcendence: unattended moments in the Modernist tradition

Recipient(s): Prof C Ackerley | PI | University of Otago
Dr SC Marshall | AI | University of Otago
Dr E Tonning | AI | University of Bergen

Public Summary: I identify a largely unrecognised philosophical and theological paradox of our literary heritage: the substantial Medieval presence within the Modernist aesthetic (1900-1960), expressed in moments of illumination that deploy religious and mystical traditions to create and/or orchestrate moments of insight that are often secular in effect. The capacity of metaphor to enact the 'miracle' of taking one from the 'here' of everyday understanding to the 'there' of the transcendent plane exemplifies how rhetorical devices and structures generate luminous effects that reconcile these two realms. To identify the 'machinery of transcendence' (in Kenneth Burke's celebrated phrase) that translates the ordinary into the extraordinary (to invoke James Joyce's equally celebrated insight) is to familiarise and thus ground those mysterious 'moments' that illuminate many Modernist works. My project, linked intimately (albeit sometimes skeptically) with the 'Modernism and Christianity' Institute at the University of Bergen, interrogates the Medieval traditions that inform Modernism, the pragmatic outcomes being: a revaluation of the Modernist tradition and its dialogue with the past; a monograph on the Modernist aesthetic; a Dunedin colloquium (and book of essays) on 'unattended moments' and literary epiphany; close work with two emerging AIs; and the training of two young researchers.

Total Awarded: $714,783

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Prof C Ackerley

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 11-UOO-016


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: The making of Maori society: an archaeological analysis of social networks and geo-political interaction.

Recipient(s): Professor TN Ladefoged | PI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor MD McCoy | AI | Southern Methodist University
Dr DRJ O'Neale | AI | The University of Auckland
Dr CM Stevenson | AI | Virginia Commonwealth University

Public Summary: The Polynesian colonists who settled New Zealand touched off the creation of a new type of society. Over the span of several centuries relatively autonomous village-based groups transformed into larger territorial hapū lineages, which later formed even larger geo-political iwi associations. Oral traditions currently provide the best evidence of these complex, dynamic changes in social organisation. In this research we will use archaeological evidence to examine how social networks beyond the village changed as Māori society developed. By tracing the spatial and temporal distribution of artefacts made of obsidian, an important stone resource that was used for a variety of tools, we will document where and when new types of social forms came about in relation to diverse social and environmental contexts. This project builds on established methods for determining the movement of obsidian through chemical signatures of natural obsidian sources. Proposed experiments will re-establish obsidian hydration dating as a viable method for determining the age of New Zealand artefacts. By utilizing sophisticated GIS and social network analysis modelling we will integrate the data to investigate the dynamic complexities of social interaction and gain new insights into how Māori society was transformed from village-based groups to powerful hapū and iwi.

Total Awarded: $705,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Professor TN Ladefoged

Panel: EHB

Project ID: 16-UOA-261


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