Research aims and accolades

Our outstanding transdisciplinary research puts us in the top 100 universities in the world.*

Aims

We aim to produce leading-edge scholarship that embraces cultural and linguistic diversity, promotes global citizenship and intercultural communication in the digital age, and deepens understanding of the cultures, languages and histories of our world.

Using a wide range of critical and creative approaches, we analyse and produce cultural and literary artefacts to explore issues such as collective memory, language use and linguistic theory, national and transnational identities, and post/colonial representations and exchanges.

Our world-class research areas include: Global studies; transatlantic studies; language teaching and learning; distance language learning; memory studies; film studies; subtitling; feminist studies; future-proofing endangered Indigenous languages and cultures; journalism and documentary studies; Māori research ethics; Indigenous data sovereignty; science and climate change communication; deliberative democracy in public decision making on science and technology; Pacific Rainbow+ communities; Aotearoa’s role in transnational Pacific mobilities, and critical Asian Studies.

Accolades

Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland is ranked 36th of the top 100 universities in the world for Linguistics, 68th for Modern Languages and leads Aotearoa New Zealand in its research-led teaching of foreign languages, linguistics, cultures, and communication.
 
Always striving to innovate, CLL is now hosting the first Global Studies degree in the country. Our researchers are recipients of prestigious international and national awards, and regular awardees of University of Auckland Research Excellence Awards.
 
Recent honours include:
 
  • Professor Gary Barkhuizen won the 2017 Award for Distinguished Research from the TESOL International Association for excellence in research on language teaching and learning.
  • Professor Martin East, President of the International Association for Task-Based Language Teaching, won a FIPLV International Award 2017 from the Fédération Internationale des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes (International Federation of Language Teacher Associations) for distinguished and outstanding contribution to research into language teaching, learning and assessment.
  • Professor Mark Mullins was awarded in 2019 the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon by the Japanese Government for contributions to the development of the sociology of religion in Japan and research on Japan in New Zealand.
  • Dr Patrick Thomsen was awarded a 2022 University of Auckland Early Career Research Excellence Award.
  • Professor Annie Goldson, documentary filmmaker was awarded in 2021 the prestigious Aronui Medal for Humanities from Te Apārangi / Royal Society of New Zealand.
  • Dr Jagadish Thaker won the 2020 National Communication Association’s Golden Anniversary Monograph Award.

*QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022

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Research highlights