Our innovative, transdisciplinary research aims to contribute to a more inclusive, fair and sustainable society.
Researcher: Matt Halliday
This research begins with a case study of Z Energy’s controversial 2022 ‘Moving with the times’ campaign, questioning the role of advertising in the midst of a climate emergency. As Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) measures become a common part of corporate language, known polluters increasingly use their advertising budgets to promote sustainable projects, while at the same time they continue investment into ecologically crippling extractive industries. This study questions what the responsibilities of the advertising industry are in regard to high-carbon industry and what they should be as the world grapples with how to combat the climate emergency.
Researcher: Vijay Devadas
This research explores a range of creative and expressive works by Asian migrants that seek to critically foster a tauiwi partnership. These works span diverse platforms and genres to challenge hegemonic settler-nationalism, migrant identities, and ground an ethics of responsibility. Approaching the analysis from a material-semiotics position, the research examines three creative productions: an app, a film and an activist network. All materially different but which collectively enact a tauiwi partnership. This partnership is built on an engagement with whenua (a Māori concept encompassing land, placenta, and source of life) as an ontological and ethical frame. The engagement with whenua operates as a transformative process demanding continuous listening, responsiveness, and co-existence. Importantly, these creative works communicate a distinctive cultural sensibility in which migrant identities and senses of belonging are reconfigured as a web of reciprocal responsibilities, positioning migrants not as passive beneficiaries of settlement, but as active Asian tauiwi partners in shaping just, sustainable, and genuinely bicultural futures in Aotearoa.
Researchers: Vijay Devadas & Sanchita Srivastava
Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, has gained prominence globally, shaping both Indian politics and diasporic communities. Soft Hindutva refers to subtle cultural nationalist expressions embedded in everyday practices, media, and identity narratives. This project investigates how soft Hindutva is articulated within New Zealand’s digital platforms. Three research questions drive the research: How is soft Hindutva articulated in content produced by or for New Zealand’s Indian diaspora? What narratives, symbols, and cultural markers are mobilised to construct identity and belonging? How do online spaces facilitate the normalisation of soft Hindutva within New Zealand’s multicultural landscape and transnational digital flows? Publicly available and open online communities were purposively sampled across platforms, focusing on the language, imagery, and interactions that frame cultural pride, religious identity, and national belonging.
Researcher: Christina Vogels
This research uses a combination of two feminist research methods to further understanding of the enduring nature of men’s use of ritualised forms of violence. In particular, it examines men fighting other men to mitigate the effects of feminised shame and to stabilise masculine honour. Using a feminist comparative historical analysis alongside a feminist systematic review, two manifestations of ritualised honour-based fighting will be explored: men’s duelling of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and today’s (hetero) romantic and homosocial practice of territory marking: men claiming ownership over their (hetero) romantic partner by threatening to fight other men who appear to be romantically interested in her. By looking at the relationship between two types of ritualised fighting from different time periods, the enduring nature of why men fight other men to mitigate feminised shame can be discussed in new ways. This type of analysis helps shed light on inherent fragilities within these violent practices, signalling how men’s ritualised fighting could be destabilised in the future.
Researcher: Aakifa Chida
Discrimination towards Muslims is an ever-growing socio-political problem. This practice-based research highlights this global issue, with the aim to increase awareness of Islamophobia through communication design. Recent global patterns of political hate speech, mass media brainwashing and harmful stereotypes are used to incite irrational fear and general insensitivity towards Islamophobia. Design activism is employed in this study to address these behaviours and attitudes, to create change by catalysing a sense of empathy with victims and heightening responsibility and accountability within viewers. The research covers the importance and relevance of design activism when set against manifestations of Islamophobia that are present in social, political and historical contexts. This project attempts to inform and educate viewers about Islamophobia, to create positive and lasting change. A combination of self-authored and compiled resources are produced across printed and digital mediums to address the issue, engendering solidarity and social empathy. https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/items/dbc8cfc5-76fe-49a1-b0d9-ec123dc3f226
Researcher: Christina Vogels
This research uses a combination of two feminist research methods to further understanding of the enduring nature of men’s use of ritualised forms of violence. In particular, it examines men fighting other men to mitigate the effects of feminized shame and to stabilise masculine honour. Using a feminist comparative historical analysis alongside a feminist systematic review, two manifestations of ritualised honour-based fighting will be explored: men’s duelling of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and today’s (hetero) romantic and homosocial practice of territory marking: men claiming ownership over their (hetero) romantic partner by threatening to fight other men who appear to be romantically interested in her. By looking at the relationship between two types of ritualised fighting from different time-periods, the enduring nature of why men fight other men to mitigate feminized shame can be discussed in new ways. This type of analysis helps shed light on inherent fragilities within these violent practices, signalling how men’s ritualised fighting could be destabilised in the future.
Researchers: Vijay Devadas & Sarah Baker
This project examined the production, circulation and distribution of algorithms of hate in Aotearoa. Focusing on the social media platforms, the project has two key aims: first, to investigate the ways in which hate discourse is framed and articulated in the context of Aotearoa. The second is to profile the characteristics of digital networks through which hateful and antagonistic content is propagated. This research contributes to debates taking place in Aotearoa on disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech.
Researcher: Geoffrey Craig
The climate emergency challenges how we understand the relationship between our economy, environment, and society. It is framed in different ways by different people, and a journalist’s job is to cover all of the action and the angles. How can they do this and still be a part of the solution? This research investigated climate journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, discussing its current practices and challenges and exploring different ways we can tell media stories about the climate emergency.
Researcher: Jennie Watts
This study explored the communicative activity between Watercare and the local communities during community engagement on the proposed development of a new water treatment facility. This research examines a community consultation and engagement process by a Council Owned Organisation (COO) in Aotearoa New Zealand, where there are valid ethical and practical arguments on both sides. Of particular interest is the organisation’s capacity to sustain authentic, workable relationships in a challenging environment.