Research aims and accolades

Whether we are studying Hollywood or the purpose of the universe, one of the questions underlying our inquiries is: What does it mean to be human?

What thoughts and actions could we shape our lives with, and what choices have people made in the past about life – and why?

We study – and create – human self-expression, reflection, interaction and responses to the world.

By deepening our understanding of the diversity and ever-changing dynamics of what it means to be human, we comprehend both ourselves and each other better – with the ultimate aim of creating more interesting, lively, empathetic, ethical and creative worlds.

We have a long tradition of contributing to Aotearoa New Zealand's most ground-breaking literature and history. Our past staff include literary stars such as Witi Ihimaera and Albert Wendt, and leading historians such as Dame Judith Binney and Dame Claudia Orange.

Commonwealth Poet Laureates

• Professor Selina Tusitala Marsh, 2025-2027

New Zealand Poet Laureates

• Professor Selina Tusitala Marsh, 2017–2019
• Emeritus Professor CK Stead, 2015–2017
• Emerita Professor Michele Leggott, Poet Laureate, 2007-2009

New Zealand Arts Laureates

• Associate Professor Paula Morris, 2022

Royal Society Te Apārangi honours

• In 2024, Professor Mark Mullins won the Pou Aronui Medal for Excellence in Humanities by the Royal Society Te Apārangi for a career of scholarship on religion in modern Japanese society and the sociology of religion.
• In 2022, Professor Tim Mulgan was awarded the Aronui Humanities Medal, Royal Society of New Zealand, for prolific, original and influential contributions to moral philosophy, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy.
• In 2017, historian Associate Professor Aroha Harris won the inaugural Royal Society Te Apārangi Early Career Researcher Award in Humanities for her substantial contributions to Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History.

Book awards

• Dr Felicity Barnes, Selling Britishness: Commodity Culture, the Dominions, and Empire (Auckland University Press, 2022), awarded the 2023 Wadsworth Prize from the UK's Business Archives Council, 2023.
• Professor Mark Mullins, Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021) selected as First Prize winner of the 2023 NZASIA Book Awards, 2023 and the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Analytical-Descriptive Studies, The American Academy of Religion, 2022.
• Professor Maartje Abbenhuis, co-authored with Prof. Ismee Tames, Global War, Global Catastrophe: Neutrals, Belligerents and the Transformation of the First World War (2021), was awarded the Norman Tomlinson Prize for Best Book on the First World War by the World War One History Association, 2021.
• Professor Ngarino Ellis, Judith Binney Best First Book Award, New Zealand Book Awards, for Illustrated Non-fiction 2017 for A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830-1930

Marsden Fund Awards

• 2021: Professor Alex Calder, “Taboo: A literary and cultural history”.
• 2020: Dr Emily Parke, Fast-Start, “Dimensions of life: integrating scientific and philosophical perspectives on the living world” (with AI Dan Hikuroa).
• 2019: Associate professors Sarina Pearson and Shuchi Kothari, ‘Asian New Zealanders on Screen: In/Visibility past and present’
• 2018: Associate Professor Aroha Harris 'Whānau Ora With, Against and Beyond the State' ($622,000)
• 2018: Dr Cheryl Ware 'Untold Intimacies: Recovering the Lives of Women Sex Workers in New Zealand, 1978–2008'
• 2017: Professor Tim Dare 'Ethical Framework for Social Policy Applications of Predictive Analysis' ($635,000)
• 2017: Associate Professor Lisa Bailey 'Servants of God, Slaves of the Church: Rhetoric and Realities of Service in Early Medieval Europe' ($625,000)
• 2017: Associate Professor Jeremy Armstrong 'Blood and Money: The Military Industrial Complex in Archaic Central Italy' ($635,000)

Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship

• Associate Professor Paula Morris, for outstanding contributions to creative writing in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2018.

Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon

• Professor Mark Mullins by the Japanese Government in recognition for his contribution to the development of the sociology of religion in Japan, research on Japan in New Zealand, and promotion of academic exchanges and mutual understanding between Japan and New Zealand, 2019. 

New Zealand On Air major funding

• 2021: Associate Professor Shuchi Kothari, creator and convenor of Episode One: Webseries Development and Pilot Production (Capacity building initiative designed on behalf of the Pan-Asian Screen Collective).
• In 2022 Shuchi received the “Outstanding Contribution to the Film and Television Industry” award from the New Zealand chapter of WIFT (Women in Film and Television).