New exchange for indigenous research

Fulbright NZ has partnered with Nga Pae o te Maramatanga – NZ’s Maori Centre of Research Excellence – to offer a range of new exchange awards in fields of indigenous development.
The three new award programmes, launched in June, offer NZ graduate students, academics, artists and professionals the opportunity to study, research, teach and present their work in the USA, in subject areas relating to economic development, environmental sustainability, health and social wellbeing and educational achievement within Maori communities.
The awards complement existing Fulbright exchange award programmes between NZ and the US, and assorted Nga Pae o te Maramatanga funding programmes for research, capability building and knowledge exchange. Fulbright alumnus Charles Royal, Director of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, knows well the benefits of overseas exchange to expanding one’s worldview and engaging with other indigenous communities.
“We are committed to achieving research excellence that will bring positive change to our communities,” he explains. “A particular feature of these new awards is that they provide opportunities for scholars to engage in the pursuit of research excellence in a context that embraces a more global sense of indigeneity.”
The inaugural recipient of the Fulbright-Nga Pae o te Maramatanga Graduate Award was announced at the award launch.
Dan Bidois from Auckland, who dropped out of school aged 15 to work as a supermarket butcher before later completing degrees in economics and marketing at the University of Auckland, will complete a Master of Public Policy degree specialising in social and economic policy at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.
For his second–year project he will focus his research on policies and initiatives for addressing education inequality, with the hope that upon his return he can help inform education policy in NZ to improve the achievement of Maori and Pacific students.