Arts Scholars

Koi te hinengaro, koi te arero, koi te mahi!
Sharp of mind, tongue, and work!

Keep up with the latest discussions and thoughts from our Arts Scholars whānau

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Reparations for Slavery to End Systemic Racism is a Terrible Idea

There have been many proposed solutions to end systemic racism, reparations for slavery being one. Reparations are a terrible idea. Systemic racism is a problem that’s deeply embedded in the system, something that doesn’t go away with a check. Systemic racism is like...

Challenging the “Facts”

On Friday evening while watching One News, my attention was drawn to a graph reporting an increase in the New Zealanders receiving a job seeker benefit due to the COVID 19 pandemic. To an unsuspecting eye, there seemed to be a major increase as the once flat line shot...

Protected: Does War Innovate?

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On fake news: the power of propaganda in protests

"This violence isn't random; it is purposive and has reasons and goals, even though it can be incredibly intense and extreme." This is a quote that Dr. Zizek gave about the French Revolution a few weeks ago, yet when trying to find a topic to draw on for this post, I...

Change

Various revolutions across the past 200 years have caused changes in social structure, political control, and the movement of our everyday lives. Today I tried to write about the french revolution. It is intriguing to look back upon the past and in their perspective...

“Gays are not real”

Dr Patrick Thomsen's research was my favourite out of all senior researchers. Solely because it was inspired by unexpected life experience, and it reinforces the idea that every, single, little, thing in our lives can become a topic of research. And these researches...

A reflection on food, productivity and Positive Peace during quarantine…

Over the last few weeks, I have watched from my screen (and the sixth-floor window of my apartment building) as people have improvised and slowly adapted to our new reality, in a range of creative and exciting ways. Charles Allen’s lecture on Positive Peace made me...

The “intelligible rationale” behind the George Floyd protests

There is a long history of dismissive linguistic and narrative framings of sociopolitical protests, both deliberate and inadvertent.    Today, certain representations of the George Floyd protests delegitimize them and distract from their driving philosophy. This...

Don’t Get Too Attached Honey

Although I failed to attend the discussion session with Tracey McIntosh, Jemaima Tiatia-Seath, Nicole Perry and Carisa Showden, I managed to get some ideas off the lecture notes.  Carisa mentioned how much emotions we should invest in the process of research, and she...

When does the war actually end?

  It is easy to think of war as a past tense. While we aren’t exposed first hand to current situations like war in Afghanistan, we can recognize this horror across media and news updates. Then we can turn the tv off and look away. We don’t need to look any...

Gender and War

When we talk about war, so often it is in terms of the male soldier or male head-of-state. When women are mentioned, it is often in the lumped phrase ‘women and children’. As we’ve progressed through this term, it has left me wondering: where are the women?  Simply,...

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Hated in our Nations

Hated in our Nations

Spoilers  for episode 6 of season 3 of Black Mirror below.  Civilian casualties are as common as they are condemned. Numbers remind us that governments, be it democratic or authoritarian, kill large numbers of civilians as a military strategy. In his lecture, Thomas...

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Labels and Positionality

Labels and Positionality

Of all the sessions we had this year, one of the most impactful for me was Dr. Madhavi Manchi's session on research positionality. She answered a lot of the questions that I didn't know had been at the back of my mind since I started my Arts degree, the core of these...

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