Authors

Janet Newman was born in Levin. She won the 2015 New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition, the 2017 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems and was a runner-up in the 2019 Kathleen Grattan Awards. Her essays about the sonnets of Michelle Leggott and the ecopoetry of Dinah Hawken won the Journal of New Zealand Literature Prize for New Zealand Literary Studies in 2014 and 2016. She has worked as a journalist in New Zealand and Australia, and a bicycle courier in London. She has three adult children and lives with her partner at Koputaroa in Horowhenua, where she farms beef cattle.

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John Newton was Llew Summers’ close friend during the last two years of the sculptor’s life. A poet, critic and cultural historian, his earlier books include ‘The Double Rainbow: James K. Baxter, Ngāti Hau and the Jerusalem Commune’ (VUP, 2009), and ‘Hard Frost: Structures of Feeling in New Zealand Literature 1908–1945’ (VUP, 2017). He is the 2020 Robert Burns Fellow.

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Ben Ngaia (Te Āti Awa) is Executive Director Development at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, overseeing the design and development of new educational programmes. Before joining the wānanga, he worked in government, education and iwi development. He is also a teacher and historian of Māori language and tikanga in his hapū and iwi.

Born and raised in Patea, Airana Ngarewa (Ngati Ruanui, Ngarauru, Ngaruahine) writes about Maori affairs for The Spinoff. His writing has also been published by RNZ,

Sir Apirana Ngata, Ngati Porou, 1874-1950, was the leading Maori figure of his day, a land reformer, politician and scholar. He made a vital contribution to the revival of the Maori people and culture in the early years of the twentieth century and is the subject of a recent biography by Ranginui Walker. Pei te Hurinui Jones, Ngati Maniapoto, 1898-1976, was an outstanding scholar who was completely bilingual. He published extensively in both English and Maori, translating Shakespeare's plays and compiling the Tainui traditions published in Nga Iwi o Tainui.

Dr Wayne Ngata (Ngati Ira, Ngati Porou, Te Aitanga a Hauiti) is a Board member of Te Kura a-Iwi o Mangatuna and the Tertiary Education Commission, and Board Chair of Te Taumata Aronui. He is active in the revitalisation of te reo Maori, and is also a specialist in Maori literature and long-time advocate for Maori art. Dame Anne Salmond ONZ DBE FRSNZ is a Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and a leading social scientist. She has written a series of prize-winning books about Maori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific, most recently Tears of Rangi (2017) from Auckland University Press. Natalie Robertson (Ngati Porou, Clann Dhonnchaidh) is a photographic and moving image artist and Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. She has exhibited extensively in public institutions throughout New Zealand and internationally, and her photography was published in the award-winning A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngati Porou Carving, 1830-1930 (2016), Auckland University Press. Amiria Salmond is a social anthropologist affiliated to both the University of Auckland and Cambridge University. She is a consultant / researcher on the five-year ERC-funded project Pacific Presences, studying German museum collections of Oceanic material, as well as relations between German anthropologists and those in the UK and the Pacific during the first half of the twentieth century. This work involves collaboration with present-day Maori and Pacific Island groups who have strong interests in collections from their homelands that are now in European museums. Monty Soutar ONZM (Ngati Porou, Ngati Awa, Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Ngati Kahungunu) is an award winning historian. He has published two major research and publication projects; Nga Tama Toa: Price of Citizenship: C Company 28 (Maori) Battalion 1939-1945 and Whiti! Whiti! Whiti! E! Maori in the First World War. He has also made a significant contribution as a member of the Waitangi Tribunal and in the development of the Te Tai Whakaea: Treaty Settlement Stories Project at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer's Fellowship in 2021. Billie Lythberg is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Auckland. She works at the junction of business studies, anthropology and history, with a strong focus on Aotearoa and the Pacific. Her work often explores innovation and sustainability in creative and cultural industries. James Schuster (Te Arawa) is a Maori Built Heritage Adviser (Traditional Arts) to the NZ Historic Places Trust Pouhere Taonga. Born and raised in Rotorua into a family that has maintained and practised Maori Arts and Crafts for generations, his traditional knowledge and skills have been passed down through his family. His great-great grandfather was Tene Waitere, the renowned Ngati Tarawhai carver. Conal McCarthy is the programme director in the School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He has published widely on the historical and contemporary Maori engagement with museums, including Exhibiting Maori: A history of colonial cultures of display (2007), Museums and Maori: Heritage professionals, indigenous collections, current practice (2011) and Museum practice: The contemporary museum at work (2015) in the series International Handbook of Museum Studies.

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No biography